JACEK DENEL

Jacek Dehnel was born in 1980 in Gdańsk. He studied Polish language and literature at the University of Warsaw. He lived in Warsaw and worked as a television host of a cultural programme and as a columnist for the “Virtual Poland” portal and the weekly Polityka until 2020, when he moved to Berlin. He has translated works by Osip Mandelstam, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. He is a co-author of the screenplay for the award-winning experimental animated film Loving Vincent (2017), about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh, with particular emphasis on the circumstances surrounding his death. Together with Piotr Tarczyński, he published works under the pseudonym Maryla Szymiczkowa.

He has published the short story collections Kolekcja (The Collection, 1999), Rynek w Smyrnie (Market Square in Smyrna, 2007), Balzakiana (Balzaciana, 2008), Fotoplastikon (The Fotoplastikon, 2009), and Kosmografia, czyli trzydzieści apokryfów tułaczych (Cosmography, or Thirty Wandering Apocrypha, 2012). His novels include Lala (2006), Saturn. Czarne obrazy z życia mężczyzn z rodziny Goya (Saturn: Black Paintings from the Lives of the Men of the Goya Family, 2011), Matka Makryna (Mother Makryna, 2014), Krivoklat (2016), Ale z naszymi umarłymi (But with Our Dead, 2019), and Łabędzie (Swans, 2023). In 2013, he published a collection of columns on books and reading, Młodszy księgowy (The Junior Accountant), and in 2015, diary entries under the title Dziennik Roku Chrystusowego (Diary of the Year of Christ). He is the author of ten poetry collections: Żywoty równoległe (Parallel Lives, 2004), Wyprawa na południe (Journey to the South, 2005), Wiersze (Poems, 2006), Brzytwa okamgnienia (The Razor of a Blink, 2007), Ekran kontrolny (The Control Screen, 2009), Rubryki strat i zysków (Columns of Losses and Gains, 2011), Języki obce (Foreign Languages, 2013), Seria w ciemność (Series into Darkness, 2016), Najdziwniejsze (The Strangest Thing, 2019), and Bruma (2022).

He is the recipient of the Kościelski Award (2005), the Polityka Passport Award (2007), and the City of Gdańsk’s Splendor Gedanensis Award (2009). Since 2009, he has been nominated five times for the Nike Award, twice for the Angelus Central European Literature Award, and once for the Wisława Szymborska Award. In 2008, the Council for the Polish Language awarded him the title of Honorary Ambassador of the Polish Language, and in May 2011, the title of Young Ambassador of the Polish Language. In recognition of his contribution to culture, in 2015 he was awarded the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, conferred by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages.