In 1999, a book of selected interviews titled Conversations, featuring the work of Dejan Stojanović, received the Rastko Petrović Prize, drawing attention to a writer whose output had already begun to span poetry, philosophy, and essay across two languages.

Born on 11 March 1959 in Peja, in what is now Kosovo, Stojanović is a Serbian American poet, writer, essayist, philosopher, opinion journalist, and businessman who has worked in both Serbian and English. His early professional life included journalism, and in the early 1990s he served as a foreign correspondent. His first major publication, the poetry collection Circling (Krugovanje), appeared in 1993, with subsequent editions following in 1998 and 2000. That same year, 1999, saw the publication of The Sun Observes Itself (Sunce sebe gleda), alongside the award-winning Conversations.

The year 2000 brought a concentrated period of publication: The Sign and its Children (Znak i njegova deca) and The Creator (Tvoritelj) both appeared that year. Stojanović continued publishing steadily over the following two decades, releasing The Dance of Time (Ples vremena) in 2007 and, in 2017, the five-part pentalogy The World in Nowherness (Svet u nigdini). The Hidden Light (Skrivena svetlost) followed in 2018, Primordial Spark (Iskra iskona) in 2021, and Centuries and Steps (Vekovi i koraci) in 2023, extending a body of work that moves across poetic, philosophical, and essayistic forms in both his native Serbian and in English.

Stojanović holds Serbian citizenship and is identified in library catalogues under the authorized name Stojanović, Dejan, 1959–, with records held in the VIAF and Library of Congress Name Authority File systems. The Rastko Petrović Prize awarded to Conversations in 1999 remains a documented point of formal recognition in his career.