ANNA CZEKANOWICZ
From 1978 to 1990, literary manager of the Baltic State Opera and Philharmonic. In 1990, participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Deputy director of the Baltic State Opera from 1994 to 2007. 2002-2005 President of the Gdańsk branch of the Polish Writers’ Association. 2007-2016 Director of the Mayor’s Office for Cultural Affairs at the City Hall in Gdańsk. 2016-2019 Advisor on cultural affairs to the Mayor of Gdańsk Paweł Adamowicz. Member of the Gdansk Culture Council (2019-2023) and the Polish PENClub. Originator of the festival and the European Poet of Freedom award.
Author of poetry books:
Someone Who Isn’t There (1976),
The prison is only in me (1978),
Full of Roses of Madness (co-author Zbigniew Joachimiak; 1983),
The Honest Lie (1986),
Death in the Air (1991),
I Still See Faces (1994)
rustling of the dress… letters to friends. Poems (2021).
She has published in ‘Point’ and ‘Title’, among others. She is the author of short stories, which can be found, among others, in the second volume of the anthology of contemporary culture Transgresje (Odmieńcy), edited by Maria Janion and Zbigniew Majchrowski.
KRZYSZTOF CZYŻEWSKI (Chairman of the Jury)
Practitioner of ideas, essayist and animator of intercultural activities. Artistic director of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 in 2012-2013. Creator of the ‘Borderland’ Foundation and the ‘Borderland – of Arts, Cultures, Nations’ Centre in Sejny. Editor-in-chief of the Krasnogruda magazine and head of the Pogranicze Publishing House, where he edits, among others, the Meridian and Neighbours series.
Initiator of intercultural dialogue programmes in Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and other borderlands of the world. Graduated in Polish philology from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In 1978-1983, he worked as an actor and instructor for the Gardzienice Theatre Association. He runs Café Europa, a flying literary café he initiated during the wars in former Yugoslavia, whose meetings, combining poetry readings with music and discussion, have so far taken place, among others, in Sarajevo, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Warsaw, Barcelona and New York. As a member of the cultural council, he collaborated with the Open Society Institute in Budapest for a number of years. Winner of the Social Innovators Fellowship and member of the Ashoka Association. Chairman of the Irena Sendler Award chapter. Winner of the St George Medal, the A. Gieysztor and J. Giedroyc awards and the ‘New Culture of New Europe’ award of the Economic Forum in Krynica.
ANDRZEJ JAGODZIŃSKI
(non-voting Secretary of the Jury)
Graduate in Czech and Slovak philology, translator, publicist, editor. He was a journalist of the Czechoslovakian section of Radio Free Europe, correspondent for ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ in Prague and Bratislava, director of the Polish Institute in Prague and cultural counsellor of the Polish Embassy there, director of the International Visegrad Fund, director of the Visegrad Festival, expert on mBank’s expansion into the Czech and Slovak markets, editor of ‘Literatura na Świecie’. In 2009, he was awarded the Angelus Central European Literature Prize, in 2011 he was honoured with the Czech Jiří Theiner Prize. He served as director of the Polish Institute in Bratislava. He has translated Havel, Kundera, Skvorecki and Hrabal, among others.
When asked about good translation, he answers: ‘A good translation is one that I read and don’t feel like reaching for the original, nothing in it rattles.’ (dwutygodnik.com)
CEZARY ŁASICZKA
Journalist at Radio TOK FM. Laureate of the ‘Populariser of Science’ award (2010) organised by the Polish Press Agency and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. He received the ‘PIK-owy Laur’ award from the Polish Book Chamber (2011) for promoting books and readership in electronic media. He was among the finalists of the Newsweek Award Competition named after Teresa Torańska (2013). In 2015, he received a special award from the President of the Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland for a series of radio programmes addressing the role of architects in the creation of space. In his weekly Poetic Friday programme, which he hosts on TOK FM Radio, he presents poetry by female and male authors from all over the world.
STANISŁAW ROSIEK
Writer, literary historian, essayist and publisher. Born in 1953 in Gdańsk. He works at the Institute of Polish Philology at the University of Gdańsk. He was a member of the editorial board of ‘Litteraria’, ‘Punkt’ and ‘Podpunkt’, as well as the annual ‘Punkt po Punkcie’. He co-edited with Maria Janion three volumes in the Transgressions series (Galernicy wrażliwości, 1981; Osoby, 1984; Maski, 1986).
Together with Stefan Chwin, he wrote the book Without Authority (1981), for which they received the Kościelski Foundation Prize in 1983. In the 1990s, he dealt with the posthumous cult of Adam Mickiewicz (Zwłoki Mickiewicza. Próba nekrografii poety, 1997) and the works of several 20th-century writers (Peiper, Schulz, Białoszewski). He is co-author of Słownik schulzowski (2002) and a series of five textbooks for the Polish language in secondary schools. In 2002, he published the anthology Dimensions of Death. In the autumn of 2008, he published his book, titled. [unwritten], and in 2010 Władza słowa.
ANDA ROTTENBERG
Art historian and critic, curator of collective and individual exhibitions presenting Polish contemporary art. Co-author of the screenplay of the feature film Ivy (directed by Hanka Włodarczyk) and author of the compendium of knowledge on Polish post-war art Sztuka w Polsce 1945-2005 (2005). Her critical texts on art were published in 2009 under the title Draught. She is the author of the multi-award-nominated autobiography Proszę bardzo (2009).
The art she promotes is highly controversial. She herself admits: ‘I’m venturing into things that are beyond the imagination of many people who are not prepared to receive contemporary art. I was, and still am, curious about the issues raised by unconventional artists who go beyond the socially recognised canons – and this always raises objections first, only later to be popularised and enter the textbooks.’ (‘Elle’)
photo: Aleksander Pawlikowski
MICHAŁ RUSINEK
Writer, literary scholar, translator. Works at the Chair of Communication Theory at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, where he teaches rhetoric, theory of writing and creative writing. Author of numerous publications on language and rhetoric. He is a translator from English and writes columns on the language of politics.
Photo: Edyta Dufaj
BEATA STASIŃSKA
Publisher, editor, co-founder and for years editor-in-chief of the W.A.B. publishing house. She holds a degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw, with which she is also now affiliated – she lectures at the postgraduate course Publishing Policy and Bookbinding at the UW.
She says of her work: ‘A publisher (…) falls in love with other people’s talents, there is no room for narcissism here. There is a kind of idealism or even naivety in this work that makes impossible things possible. You have to like the people who write, respect them for their talent, because it’s a rare gift.’ (‘Elle’)
Beata Stasińska was awarded the National Order of the Chevalier of Merit by the French government and awarded the badge of Distinguished Cultural Service. The weekly Polityka awarded her the title of Creator of Culture (2002), and she was also honoured with the medal of Merit to Culture Gloria Artis (2008). She is a member of the Programme Council of the Congress of Women, the informal social movement Citizens of Culture, the Polish PEN-Club and the Media Fund Council.
Photo: Filip Miller
OLGA TOKARCZUK
Psychologist, writer, poet, essayist, screenwriter. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in 1962 in Sulechów. She graduated in psychology from the University of Warsaw, but devoted herself to literature.
Her novels have been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian, Turkish, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Hindi. Some of the works have been staged and film adaptations made.
For Tokarczuk, writing is something very personal. ‘It would be too big a task – to help the world. Too ambitious. Writing, telling stories, organises first of all myself, my own experience.’ The role of the writer is ‘to see through the chaos to some thread of meaning. Perhaps all meaning cannot be something given from the outside, cannot be any objective order; giving meaning then becomes creating it. Perception itself is already the creation of order.’ (merlin.pl)
Photo: Krzysztof Dubiel for the Book Institute
