Aleš Debeljak was the author of eight collections of poetry and twelve books of essays in Slovenian. His work has been translated into English, Japanese, German, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Italian. His latest work, Smugglers, translated by Brian Henry, was published by BOA in 2015. Deblejak was active in civil society movements. He was the co-editor of the critical alternative journal Nova revija and participated in the social liberal think tank, Forum 21, led by the former president of Slovenia, Milan Kučan. Debeljak passed away in January 2016.