<aside> 📎 “It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it...but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love...” — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
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Ongoing:
✍🏼 Working on my first book, an anti-war memoir about my search for home as a Yugoslav refugee growing up in Vancouver in the mid-90s
👩🏻🏫 2026 update: I’ll be presenting a workshop at the Federation of BC Writer’s upcoming Memoir Writing Intensive: Avoiding the Potholes of Memory Lane (May 11-15).
💸 ****I have received another Canada Council for the Arts grant (!!) to support the last phase of memoir MS revisions before I resubmit it to Diaspora Dialogues and begin to seek representation.
**🗣️ 2025 update:** I completed a 6-month mentorship with award-winning memoirist and novelist Ayelet Tsabari to refine my most recent draft. I will be submitting my manuscript to two Diaspora Dialogues beta readers and working on a publishing plan.
📩 My first ever poetry contest submission earned a spot on the long list!
🥉 “If others could see into me” - FBCW’s Annual Poetry Contest, 2025.
💻 2024 update: Awarded a long-form mentorship from Diaspora Dialogues.
**🟧** Sharing updates on Substack at a journey of visions and revisions — by vishmili.
📩 Working on submissions for contests and publications. Also: workshopping in community, reality checking, persevering, refining my practice, submitting again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
🥉 “Seasons of Summer” - EVENT Magazine’s Non-Fiction Contest, 2024 short list.
🥉 “The First Sting” (revised) - The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards, 2024 short list.
2021-2023 update: I have received a grant (!) and so thus declare: I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
🥉 “The Final Sting” - The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards, 2023 short list.
🥉 "Dressing Up" - The Humber Literary Review/*CNFC contest,* 2021 short list.
💪🏼 31 rejection letters and counting. (Ok, I stopped counting.)
🎸2020 update: Coping with pandemic life by writing COVID covers and #instapoems and building the glossary of my life at idefiningi.wordpress.com.
🃏 Documenting my study and fascination with the tarot tradition on @theoriginaltarot (when I remember to post).
a website by Višnja Milidragović ©️ 2026 | vishmili.com