RYBAŁKO Alicja

Born on 4 July 1960 in Vilnius (then in the USSR, now Lithuania); daughter of the surgeon Wacław Rybałko, and the chemist Halina, née Kozłowska. After completing the Polish-language middle school no. 5 in the Antakalnis district of Vilnius in 1978, she studied biology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Vilnius. She made her debut in 1978 with a poem published in "Płomyk", winning the Young Pens (Młode Pióra) literary competition. The following year she started publishing poetry in "Czerwony Sztandar", a Polish-language daily published in Vilnius (1979 and 1984-90). She was a member of a poetry group that emerged from the Literary Circle that was associated with the editorial office of "Czerwony Sztandar". After graduating in 1983, she was appointed junior researcher at the Scientific-Research Institute of Experimental and Clinical Medicine (1983-85) and at the Scientific-Research Institute for Maternal and Children's Health (1985-86). She was then employed as a geneticist at the Centre for Human Genetics in Vilnius from 1986 to 1999. She worked at the University of Vilnius from 1990 to 1999, where she was awarded a doctoral degree in cytogenetics in 1998. She was a member of the Lithuanian Society of Human Genetics. During this period she was also active as a poet and translator (from Lithuanian into Polish). In 1987, she published her first translations of the works of Marcelijus Martinaitis in the weekly "Tak i Nie" (no. 28). She published poems and translations of Lithuanian poetry in Vilnius-based periodicals including "Kurier Wileński", "Magazyn Wileński" (1990-93, and 1995), "Znad Wilii", as well as in Polish publications including "Arkusz" (1993-2001) and "Śląsk" (1993-95, and 2001-02). She also published occasionally in "Integracje", "Kresy Literackie", "Lithuania", and "Tygiel Kultury". She also wrote lyrics for the group Kapela Wileńska. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and honours, including the Copernicus Foundation Prize (1990), the B. Sadowska prize (1991) and the Juliusz Słowacki prize (1993). She has twice received the W. Hulewicz prize (1995 and 2000), which is awarded by the Polish Writers' Union (ZLP). She also received the private Finnish-based Sawicz prize (1997). She joined the Lithuanian Writers' Union in 1995. In 1999, she married Dr Frank Brunsmann, a researcher in the health service, and subsequently moved to Münster, Germany. She became a researcher at empirica Gesellschaft für Kommunikations-und Technologieforschung mbH in Bonn (2001-03), before moving to the Charité Clinical Centre in Berlin in 2003. She received the Polish-Lithuanian Integral Humanism honorary medal in 2000. Mother to Witold and Natalia, she lives in Münster.