16 December 2013 Magdalena Tulli awarded!
Magdalena Tulli – prose writer and translator, a guest of last year’s edition of the Conrad Festival – received the Julian Tuwim Literary Award during a festive gala yesterday. The award committee emphasised that in her works, Tulli “proves her great sensitivity to social issues”. The winner received a statuette and a cheque for PLN 50,000.
Magdalena Tulli is one of the most outstanding Polish contemporary writers. She received the Kościelski Award for her debut book Sny i kamienie (Dreams and Stones; 1995), and the book has been translated into: English, French, Russian, German, Italian, Czech, Croatian, Slovenian, Latvian, Hungarian, and Swedish, among others. She is a translator from French and Italian, awarded by Literatura na Świecie for her translation of Fleur Jaeggy’s collection of short stories, La paura del cielo (1999). Winner of the special award at the Gdynia Literary Festival (2007) and in 2012 for Włoskie szpilki. That same year, she was also honoured with the Gryfia Prize for Female Authors, awarded for the first time. The book also brought her the third nomination in a row for the Nike Literary Award. To date, she has published: Sny i kamienie (Dreams and Stones; 1995), W czerwieni (In Red; 1998), Tryby (Moving Parts; 2003), Skaza (Flaw; 2006), Kontroler snów (2007, under a pen name of Marek Nocny), and Włoskie szpilki (2011). Together with Sergiusz Kowalski, she published Zamiast procesu: raport o mowie nienawiści (2003) – an analysis of stereotypical representations of minority groups in the right wing press. In her prose works, she plays with fictional novel conventions and the role of the narrator, highlighting the coexistence of the real world and the imaginary world, subjective and universal experience.
The Julian Tuwim Literary Award is the pre-war Literary Award of the City of Łódź, reinstated this year. It is awarded for lifetime achievement, just like before the war, when authors such as Julian Tuwim, Andrzej Strug, and Zofia Nałkowska received it. The criterion that the writer needs to meet also refers to tradition. His or her oeuvre has to be of a high order and prove the writer’s sensitivity to social issues. The award is presented during the Pulse Literary Festival.
Pic. Michał Ramus, www.michalramus.com
