Valentina Markasović received her BA and MA degrees in History and English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia. She currently works there as a teaching assistant and is a doctoral student in the “Literature and Cultural Identity” program. As a freelance translator, she usually translates popular fiction novels from English to Croatian. Her primary fields of interest are popular and fantastic literature, children’s and young adult literature, with a focus on the representation and construction of women’s identities. She is the Secretary of the Croatian Association for American Studies (CAAS), a member of the Center for North American Studies at the University of Osijek, as well as an Executive Committee member of the Centre for Popular Culture at the same university. She is also a co-editor of the Centre’s scholarly peer-reviewed blog, Fractals: The Shapes of Popular Culture.