Vladimír Balla, publishing under his surname Balla, was born in Nové Zámky in 1967. In 1996 he won the Ivan Krasko Prize for his first collection of short stories, Leptokaria. In 2011 he published V mene otca (In the Name of the Father), a novella with autobiographical elements that was awarded the prestigious Anasoft Litera Prize. In 2015 he published another novella, Veľká láska (Big Love). His latest book is a collection of shorter, provocative stories entitled Je mŕtvy (Is Dead, 2018).
