Joksim Nović-Otočanin (15 March 1807, in Zalužnica – 18 January 1868, in Novi Sad) was a Serbian adventurer, freedom fighter, and romantic writer of verse and prose.
He completed his secondary education at the Serbian Gymnasium in Sremski Karlovci, studied philosophy at Jena, Göttingen, The Hague, and law in Sárospatak and in Vienna.
The advice was given to him years back by Vuk Karadžić (to write as common folk speak) and Adam Mickiewicz (the exiled Polish poet who suggested that he take the Kosovo cycle and turn it into a national epic) now bore fruit.
Otočanin played an important part in the revolutionary events of 1848/4, first as a member of a delegation to Vienna and later joining a group of Serbs formed to draft the constitution of Serbian Vojvodina.
There he wrote some of the most memorable romantic poems about Hajduk Veljko, Vasa Čarapić, Janko Katić, Stanoje Glavaš (1860–61), Ilija Birčanin (1862), Dušanija: Znati Dogadjaji za Vremena Carstva (Dušan and the Matter of the Serbian Empire; 1863), Moskovija: Krimski Rat (Moscow: the Crimean War; 1863), Karađorđe izbavitelj Srbije (Karageorge: Emancipator of Serbia, 1865).