Jorge Emilio Nedich is one of the leading figures of Romani literature in Argentina. Until the age of seventeen, he lived a nomadic life with his family in tents, which is why he did not attend school during that time. Nevertheless, he learned to read as a child and to write as a teenager, driven by his desire to become a writer.
In his thirties, after attending several literary workshops, he published his first two novels: Gitanos, para su bien o su mal (Torres Agüero Editor, 1994), which won an award in Italy at the 1995 Amico Rom competition. In 1997, he published Ursari with the same publisher. In 1999, he submitted both works as part of his application for the university entrance exams for people over 25. The National University of Lomas de Zamora thus set a legal precedent, and Nedich began studying literature. That same year, he was a finalist for the Premio Planeta de Argentina with his novel Leyenda gitana (2000). His work El aliento negro de los romaníes was a finalist for the Argentinian Premio Planeta and was published in 2005 by Editorial Planeta. This was followed by the books El pepe Firmenich (2003, Ediciones B), a chronicle of Romani history titled El pueblo rebelde (2010, Editorial Vergara), El alma de los parias (2014, Ediciones de la Flor), La alta de color obispo (2021, Voria Stefanovsky Editores) and Cuentos de caravana (2023).
In 2021, he received the Award for Literature and Theatre Arts from the Spanish Institute of Romani Culture, in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Two years later, he received the Amico Rom A la Carrera Literaria Award in Italy for the second time, thanks to which his novel El alma de los parias was published in Italian under the title Alma gitana. In the past, he taught at the University of Buenos Aires and at the National University of Lomas de Zamora.
