Dejan Ognjanović worked at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, as a teaching assistant, at the Department of English studies, on the subject of American literature.
Thanks to their grant, he spent two semesters (Fall 2003 – Spring 2004) as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, California, USA, at the courses relevant for American studies.
Currently, Ognjanović is an independent scholar and editor at Orfelin Publishing (Novi Sad, Serbia) where he edits the series "Poetics of Horror", which includes translations of some works, extensive afterwords for each book, biographies and bibliographies of selected authors, etc.
Naživo (In Vivo, 2003)[3] is a brutal and dark tale about the resonances of the war violence from Bosnia and Kosovo in a „peaceful“ environment of sanctions-bound and depraved Interzone called Serbia.
Politics, war, snuff, occult, underground cinema and pornography are merged in a gruesome tale of a young man's search for meaning in the middle of chaos.
Ognjanović's second novel, Zavodnik (The Seducer, 2014)[4] brings a change of pace: it is an atmospheric folk-horror Serbian rendition of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, about a young teacher brought into a mostly deserted and dead village in the mountains to teach a couple of orphans under the care of their grandma.
The end of the 1990s in the territory of the former Yugoslavia: one battlefield is dying down in Bosnia, while another, in the South of Serbia (i.e. Kosovo), is slowly starting to smolder...A group of veterans is on a special mission leading them into the heart of the nearly impassable Prokletije mountain range, where the Human, the Subhuman and the Superhuman intertwine... Ognjanović's short stories and novellas have been published in many Serbian magazines, journals and book anthologies.
Ognjanović's essays in English were published in the books edited by Steven Schneider:100 European Horror Films (British Film Institute, London, 2007), on Déjà vu, 1987); 501 Movie Directors (Quintessence / Barron's, London / New York City, 2007), on Alejandro Jodorowsky, Goran Marković, James Whale, Jan Svankmajer, Kaneto Shindo, Kim Ki Duk and Sogo Ishii; 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die (Quintessence / ABC Books, London/Sydney, 2009) on Mask of the Demon, Suspiria, The Abominable Dr Phibes, The Beyond, The Devil Rides Out, The Exorcist, The Masque of the Red Death and The Wicker Man; 101 SF Movies You Must See Before You Die (Quintessence / ABC Books, London/Sydney, 2009) on Blade Runner, Stalker, The Terminator and RoboCop; 101 Gangster Movies You Must See Before You Die (Quintessence / ABC Books, London/Sydney, 2009) on Dillinger, and 101 War Movies You Must See Before You Die (Quintessence / ABC Books, 2009) on Tora!
Ognjanović's essay Genre Films in Recent Serbian Cinema was published in a bilingual collection Uvođenje mladosti / Youth Rising (Filmski Centar Srbije, Beograd, 2008); it is also available in the special edition of the web magazine KinoKultura br.
The Monstrous Feminine in (Post)Modern Slasher Films is in Speaking Of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology (Caroline Joan S. Picart and John Edgar Browning, eds.
Ognjanović's interviews with the genre greats (i.e. Christopher Lee, Stuart Gordon, Jaume Balaguero, Sergio Stivaletti) were published in Horror Movie Heroes (Rue Morgue Library, Vol 2; 2014).
[6] He used to write book and film reviews and interviews on several, now mostly defunct websites in English, such as Kung Fu Cult Cinema, Twitch, Beyond Hollywood, Unearthed and Quiet Earth.
In Serbia, Ognjanović has published over a hundred film reviews, essays and interviews since 1996, in numerous daily papers, magazines and cinema journals.
Among many lectures and presentations, he also had master classes with such names as Brian Yuzna, Richard Stanley, Simon Boswell, Harry Kumel, Sergio Stivaletti and others.
Dejan Ognjanović was program director of “Slaughter: The Art Horror Film Festival” which took place in Doljevac, Serbia, July 1-3.
He regularly writes afterwords and essays for the publisher Veseli četvrtak, especially for their editions of Dylan Dog, Martin Mystere and Zagor.
Ognjanović also wrote afterwords for Serbian editions of Alberto Breccia’s albums Myths of Cthulhu and Mort Cinder (Darkwood, Belgrade, 2018).
Dejan Ognjanović did the artwork for the short comic (16 pages) Transcendence, adapted by Edward Lee and John Pelan from their own same-titled story.
Dejan Ognjanović was The Bram Stoker Award finalist in the category Short non-fiction, for his essay “The Three Paradigms of Horror” (Vastarien, Vol.