Nadja Tesich was born in Yugoslavia and came to Chicago at age fifteen. She attended Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin and did graduate work at New York University Film School and the Sorbonne in Paris. She has taught Film at Brooklyn College and French Literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of the novel Shadow Partisan, which received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. Her other published works include To Die in Chicago, a literary memoir based on two years of immigration to the U.S., the novels Native Land and Far from Vietnam, and the play After the Revolution, as well as short stories and poetry. She has worked in films, and is the writer/director of Film for my Son. As an actress she starred in Nadja A Paris by Eric Rohmer.