Jurij Andruchowycz

Yuri Andrukhovych (born 1960) – Ukrainian poet, prose writer, singer, essayist and translator.

He has published five poetry books — Sky and Squares (1985), Downtown (1989), Exotic Birds and Plants (1991, new editions 1997 and 2002), The Songs for Dead Rooster (2004) and Letters to Ukraine (2013).

Andrukhovych`s prose works, the novels Recreations (1992), Moscoviad (1993), Perverzion (1996) 12 Rings (2003) and Mystery (2007), Lexicon of Intimate Cities (2011), Fantomas Has Been Burried Here (2015) have had a considerable impact on readers in Ukraine. His latest novel Lovers of Justice was published in 2018.

Andrukhovych also writes literary essays (collected in Disorientation in Locality, 1999 and The Devil is in the Cheese, 2006). Together with Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk he published My Europe (2000 and 2001).

Yuri Andrukhovych’s books have been translated to many languages including English, German, French, Italian and Polish. He has translated poetry of Rilke, Mandelstam, Pasternak, American poets of the Beat Generation, and short stories of Bruno Schulz.

In 1985, together with Viktor Neborak and Oleksandr Irvanets, he founded the popular literary performance group “Bu-Ba-Bu” (Burlesque-Bluster-Buffoonery). Laureate of many prestigious international literary awards: Herder Preis (2001), Erich-Maria Remarque Friedenspreis (2005), Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (2006), Central-European Literary Award „Angelus“ (2006), Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken (2014), Vilenica Award (2017).

 

Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch (born 1950) – American poet, essayist and literary critic.

A MacArthur Fellow, Hirsch has published Gabriel: A Poem (2014) and The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), (Pieśń trubadura in Polish, which brings together 35 years of poetry from seven previous collections, including For the Sleepwalkers (1981), Wild Gratitude (1986), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994), On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), and Special Orders (2008).

He has also written five books, including How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller, and Poet’s Choice (2006). He edited the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press). He has edited Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-edited The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.

He taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston for 17 years and now serves as President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

 

Michael Krüger

Michael Krüger (born 1943) – German publisher, writer, editor, translator, critic and connoisseur of contemporary literature.

While starting his professional career in publishing at Herbig Verlag Berlin, he also studied philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 1968 Krüger became editor at the independent Publishing House Carl Hanser and has been its Executive Director from 1985 until 2013.

Michael Krüger writes short stories and novellas, novels and essays but is best known in Germany as a poet. For over three decades, he has also been the editor of the literary journal Akzente. He made his literary debut in 1976 with a poetry collection Reginapoly. His most recent collection of poems At Night beneath Trees – Selected Poems and Das Elfte Gebot – The Eleventh Commandment are also available in English language.

Michael Krüger received numerous awards and honours both for his own work as well for his role as pathfinder and enthusiastic go-between for international literature in Germany. Krüger lives in Munich.

 

 

Mercedes Monmany

Mercedes Monmany (born 1957) – Spanish literary scholar, writer, critic, translator, editor and juror of various literary awards.

Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia, Mercedes is a regular contributor to many literary journals, among them Revista de Libros, La Vanguardia Dossier, GRANTA (Spanish Edition, member of the editorial board), Cahiers de l’Herne (France), as well as a literary supplement to daily ABC. Mercedes Monmany has been the curator of anthological exhibitions about great international writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jules Verne or Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and jury member in several important Spanish literary prizes.

She is the editor of poetry and essay series “La Rama Dorada” (The Golden Bough) at Huerga & Fierro Publishing House, and the director of the collection “Los Papeles de Sefarad” (The Papers of Sefarad), edited in collaboration with Centro Sefarad-Israel and the Publishing House Errata Naturae.

Mercedes is the author of several collections of essays and books on literary history and criticism: Una infancia de escritor, Don Quijote en los Cárpatos, Vidas de mujer, Spains’s Great Untranslated. Anthology, Juan Perucho: De lo maravilloso y lo real. Her most important essay is Along European Borderlands. A Travel Through the 20th and 21st Century Writing (Por las fronteras de Europa. Un viaje por la narrativa de los siglos XX y XXI, Galaxia Gutenberg Publishing House, Barcelona, 2015).

Recently she has publish the essay Ya sabes que volveré (You know that I’ll be back, Galaxia Gutenberg Publishing House, 2017) about three women writers dead in Auschwitz: Etty Hillesum, Gertrud Kolmar and Irène Némirovsky.

 

 

Tomasz Różycki

Tomasz Różycki (born 1970) – Polish poet, essayist and translator.

Critically and popularly acclaimed author of seven poetry collections, most recently Letters (Litery) 2016, and earlier, an epic poem Twelve Stations (Dwanaście stacji) – awarded the 2004 Kościelski Foundation Prize, a novel Bestiary (Bestiarium) 2012, as well as an essay Tomi. Notes from a Stopover (Tomi. Notatki z miejsca postoju) 2013.

Laureate of the «Zeszyty Literackie» Josif Brodsky Prize (2006), and Kamień Prize (2010); his sonnet collection Colonies (Kolonie) in Mira Rosenthal’s 2013 English translation won the 2014 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, and was short listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2014. Różycki’s books have been published in France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Serbia, Spain, China and the United States. In 2006 he published a translation of Stephane Mallarme’s A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance (Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard), and in 2011 Jacques Burko’s Certdoubts (Certidoutes).

 

 

Andrzej Franaszek

Jury secretary:
Andrzej Franaszek (born 1971) – literary critic, essayist.

Member of the Tygodnik Powszechny (Weekly General) editorial staff, and a faculty member of the Pedagogical University in Krakow.

Author of Miłosz. A Biography (Wydawnictwo Znak, 2011, English edition Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017) for which he has received many awards, including the Kościelski Foundation Prize, the Readers Nike Prize of “Gazeta wyborcza”, Kazimierz Wyka Prize, and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Award.

His other books include Ciemne źródło. Esej o cierpieniu w twórczości Zbigniewa Herberta (Tenebrous Spring. An Essay on Suffering in Zbigniew Herbert’s Work) 2nd edition Znak, 2008, and Przepustka z piekła. 44 szkice o literaturze i przygodach duszy (Laisses-passer from Hell. 44 Sketches about Literature and Adventures of the Soul), Znak, 2010.

In April 2018 Wydawnictwo Znak will publish his 2-volume biography of Zbigniew Herbert.