Wiwien Wintarto

I was born on May 4, 1971, on a small village called Gedongan in Magelang County, the province of Central Java, Indonesia. Following the footsteps of my father who is a comicbook artist and cartoonist, I want to be a comicbook artist and a cartoonist too. Then, something happened that change my life completely.

In 1985, I became a member of Perpustakaan Keliling or Mobile Library, a service provided by the Local Government Public Library Office of Semarang to urge young people to read. The Mobile Library comes in a small truck fully loaded by books, especially teenage romance novels, children storybook, and detective novels. It arrives in my neighborhood once a week every Wednesday at 3 PM.

Through the Mobile Library I read books by Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, and Indonesian legends such as Arswendo Atmowiloto and deeply impressed by them. Soon after, I switch my future dreams from comicbook and cartoon into literature and fiction. Then I swore myself to dedicate my life as a novelist like those big names.

I started my writing career as a freelance writer at Cempaka Minggu Ini family tabloid in 1992. Five years later I became an editor at Dharma news tabloid and in Tren teens tabloid in 2001. My first big break on publishing world came exactly 20 years after I enrolled to become the member of the Mobile Library. In 2005, I published my first novel, Kok Jadi Gini?Kok Jadi Gini, literally means How Come It Could be Like This in English.

To this day, I’ve written five novels which are all published by PT Elex Media Komputindo and 2 more which are published by Gramedia Pustaka Utama, both in Jakarta. Now I write novels and work as an editor at Gradasi teens magazine since August 2007.