Novakovich, the son of a Croatian clog-maker, immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty to attend Vassar College. He is the author of a collection of essays, Apricots from Chernobyl, and a short story collection, Yolk, both published in 1995 by Graywolf Press in St. Paul, Minnesota.

His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Pushcart Prize XV and XIX, Paris Review, Antaeus, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Philip Lopate, editor of The Art of Personal Essay, calls Novakovich “a strong, original writer. His subtle prose makes me beam with pleasure and break into an anxious sweat at the same time. He has mastered the tone of ‘bearing witness’ as a principle of moral literature.”

Novakovich, who teaches writing at the University of Cincinnati, has won numerous writing awards, including two National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, a Cohen/Ploughshares award, a Whitings writing award, and an Ingram Merrill award. His published work includes"

Three Deaths (2010)

Fiction Writer's Workshop (2008)

April Fool's Day: A Novel (P.S.) (2006)

Infidelities : Stories of War and Lust (2005)

Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys (Terra Incognita Series, 7) (2002)

Writing Fiction Step by Step (1998)

Salvation and Other Disasters (1998)

Yolk (1995)

Apricots from Chernobyl (1995)