Hajrije Kolimja

Growing up, Hajrije feverishly wrote for elementary school contests and studied the dictionary for spelling bees. Words were central in her life, and so was learning. She was fortunate to have teachers she loved and a mother who had been a teacher — who sat with her to read and write and grow together. It is this spirit of generosity and patience that Hajrije brings as an educator. She wishes for every student she works with to feel the excitement of discovering where their thinking can go, and how words can help them reimagine what is possible.

Hajrije earned her BA in English and Philosophy from DePaul University, graduating summa cum laude, with honors and distinction. She was awarded the Mary Zavada Memorial Endowed Scholarship in Creative Writing. Hajrije then received her MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago as the recipient of the Humanities Fellowship before moving to Iowa City and earning her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, which honored her with the Taylor-Chehak Prize in Fiction. From Harvard, she holds an online certificate in Higher Education Teaching.

Hajrije is the recipient of a Fulbright research and writing award to Albania. There, she coached dozens of high schoolers alongside EducationUSA, guiding them on their college essays. She later created the country’s first youth writing program — an initiative that blossomed into the country’s first online writing center. She has also worked as an arts administrator and educator at Chicago nonprofits like 826Chicago and Open Books, and she has been a Visiting Assistant Professor in the University of Iowa’s English Department. Her students have followed their dreams to places like Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, and elsewhere.

She feels lucky spending her days surrounded by people who believe in the weight and power of language.