Nermina Beganovic lost her mother, father, and brother during the Bosnian War in the 1990s. She was beaten and gang-raped by Serbian soldiers. And she survived.
She made her way to the United States, landed in Portland, Oregon, had a child whom she raised as a single mother, and became an advanced-practice nurse practitioner.
She still feels the trauma from the war. She still battles ghosts. And she works with people who are facing the ghosts of their past trauma – people whose pasts are very much alive in the present.
Nermina Beganovic is a fictional character. But she’s based on the actual experiences of Bosnian women and girls who survived that war.
Nermina’s Chance is the first novel from writer Dina Greenberg, who says the story took her more than a decade to write. During that period, Dina Greenberg earned her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she also served as managing editor for the literary journal Chautauqua. Her short stories have appeared in multiple literary journals, including Pembroke Magazine, Split Rock Review, Thrice Fiction, Bellevue Literary Review, and Barely South.
She now teaches creative writing courses at the Cameron Art Museum and collects the stories of intergenerational trauma survivors.
Resources:
Most Mira: https://www.mostmiraproject.org/
Cameron Art Museum classes:
http://learn.cameronartmuseum.org/museumschool_online/adult.php
Independent bookstores:
