Chojnowski, Przemysław

born 1975 in Białystok. Polish translator of poems and prosa texts by Erich Fried, Johannes Bobrowski, Günter Eich, Ernst Wichert, Paul Celan, Siegried Lenz, Manfred Peter Hein and Henryk Bereska.

Assistant Professor at the Department of Polish and Classical Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He works at Collegium Polonicum in Słubice at the Polish-German border. He received his PhD from the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) 2005. From 2008 to 2010 Polish Studies Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Chojnowski’s most important publications, both in Polish and German, are devoted to translations and reception of Polish literature, Polish-German liaisons, literary bilingualism, and the poetry of Fr. Jan Twardowski. He is author of the monograph on Karl Dedecius’ Translation Poetics  (Berlin, 2005). Recently he edited and published correspondence of the German translator with the Polish Nobel Prise Winners for Literature, Czesław Miłosz (Łódź, Dresden 2011).

Zimnicka, Iwona

Iwona Zimnicka, born in 1963 in Warsaw. In 1987 she took her M.A. degree, Norwegian philology, at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. 1989-2000 Norwegian teacher and 1990-2004 secretary at Polish-Norwegian Friendship Society. Since 1991 translator at the District Court of Justice in Warsaw and the Ministry of Justice. Since 1992 she has been translating Norwegian and Danish literature into Polish.

Member of the Polish Translators’ Association (belles-lettres division). In 1996 awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit by King of Norway Harald V.  On IBBY Honour List 2000 for translation of Jostein Gaarder’s book "Hallo? Er det noen her?" In 2002 awarded Silver Cross of Merit by the President of Poland for popularisation of Norwegian culture in Poland. 

Translated, among others, books by Jostein Gaarder, Roy Jacobsen, Lars Saabye Christensen, Per Petterson, Atle Næss, Åsne Seierstad, Jo Nesbø, Anne Holt, Peter Høeg, Karen Blixen, Christian Jungersen, Carsten Jensen, Jonas T. Bengtsson. 

Huelle, Paweł

A novelist and author of a volume of verse, Pawel Huelle was born in Gdańsk in 1957 and died in late November 2023. He studied philology at Gdańsk University. For a time he worked for the press service of Solidarność (Solidarity). He has also worked as a university lecturer, journalist, director of the Gdańsk Polish Television Center and, as a columnist, for "Gazeta Wyborcza".

Kopacki, Andrzej

Born in 1959 in Warsaw, Andrzej Kopacki is a translator of German literature, essayist and journalist and works in the Institute of German Studies of the University of Warsaw, as the editor of the journal "Literatura na Świecie".

Kopacki has received a scholarship by the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Mörike-Förderpreis, he was awarded by the Pro Helvetia Foundation in 1988 and the Association of Polish Translators in 1998.

Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosław

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, the controversial grand old man of Polish literature, was born in 1894 in the township of Kalnik (today Kijowa) close to Winnica, an eastern enclave of Polish culture in present-day Ukraine. Iwaszkiewicz grew up in a multilingual environment, and his poetic debut in 1915 was in Russian rather than Polish. As a young man he worked as a private tutor for children of the local Russian-speaking community. He later studied law in Kiev and only moved to Warsaw at the age of 24, when Ukraine was about to be conquered by the Bolsheviks. His ties to Russian culture remained strong and he was an acclaimed a translator of Tolstoy and Chekhov (and, from other side of the Baltic Sea, of Hans Christian Andersen and Kierkegaard). He died in Warsaw in 1980.

Chwin, Stefan

Born in 1949, the novelist and essayist Stefan Chwin also writes adventure-fantasy tales for younger readers and illustrates them himself. He has also written critical and historical studies of literature. He lives in Gdańsk and works at the university there. In 1999 he was awarded the Andreas Gryphius Prize.