BIO
Born on 24 August 1961 in Gdynia; daughter of the civil servant Stanisław Filipiak and Jadwiga, née Sicińska. She was a pupil at Grammar School No. 2 in Gdynia, completing her advanced secondary education in 1980. She then took a degree in Polish philology at the University of Gdansk (UG). During her studies she qualified as a theatre instructor and ran an amateur theatre company where she staged, among other things, her own poetic drama about witches. She was awarded a master's degree from UG in 1986 for her thesis Śmierć jako gwałt w poezji Stanisława Grochowiaka (Death as an Act of Violence in the Poetry of Stanisław Grochowiak). The work was supervised by Prof. Maria Janion. The same year, she left for France on a tourist visa in order to learn French at a school run by Alliance Française. Towards the end of the school year, she applied for political asylum both to the French government and to the US Embassy. Her application was accepted in both cases, but in November 1987 she opted to leave for the United States of America. She worked in various jobs, while also receiving unemployment benefit for a period. She studied visual arts in parallel, while in 1989 she took a course in improvised theatre and stage writing at the school of the HB Studio in New York. She made her debut in 1990 with the short story Zdobycz (Trophy), which was published in the Paris-based periodical "Kontakt" (no. 9/10). Her short stories, poems, articles and reviews subsequently appeared in publications including the "Przegląd Polski" supplement of "Nowy Dziennik" (New York, 1990-2001), as well as the Poland-based periodicals "bruLion" (1991-1992), "Czas Kultury" (1990, 1991, 1992, and 1995), "Odra" (1991, 1992, 1994, and 1996), and the "Ex Libris" supplement of "Życie Warszawy" (1995-1996). She returned to Poland in 1996 and She became a member of the Association of Polish Writers (SPP) in 1997. The same year, she began teaching courses in creative writing on the postgraduate programme in gender studies at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw (UW). She published articles, reviews and poems in periodicals including "Res Publica Nowa" (1997-2000), as well as regular columns in magazines including the Polish edition of "Marie Claire" (1998-99), the women-focused "Wysokie Obcasy" supplement of "Gazeta Wyborcza", including here the series Twórcze pisanie dla młodych panien (Creative writing for young ladies), "Pani" (2000-01), and "Activist" (2001-02). In 1999, she directed and staged a performance by the female studies participating in her creative writing course at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CSW) at the Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. Between 2001 and 2007 she taught creative writing on the Postgraduate Programme in Literary and Artistic Studies (Studium Literacko-Artystyczne) at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She left for the USA again in 2003, this time on a Kościuszko Foundation scholarship to work as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. After being awarded a doctoral degree in 2005 from the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN) for her dissertation Maria Komornicka i kreacje odmienności (Maria Komornicka's Constructions of Otherness), which was supervised by Prof. Maria Janion, the following year she was an affiliated scholar in the gender studies programme in the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Between 2007 and 2009 she studied at Mills College in Oakland and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in English Language and Creative Writing. In 2009, she was appointed lecturer at the Chair of English-Language Cultures and Literatures at the Institute of English and American Studies at UG. In 2010 she established the Foundation Pisarze dla Pokoju/Writers for Peace, which remained active until 2015. She lives in Gdynia.
Twórczość
1. Śmierć i spirala. [Opowiadania]. Wrocław: „A” 1992, 144 s. Biblioteka Feministyczna Przedruk zob. poz. ↑.
Zawartość
2. „Hollywood” [Monodram]. Prapremiera: Reżyseria: I. Filipiak. New York, Open Center 1993.
3. Samouczek polsko – angielski. Do nauki języka angielskiego bez nauczyciela, opracowany specjalnie dla Polaków w Ameryce. Gdańsk; New York: Axter; Pol-Am Publishers 1994, 291 s. [Wyd. 2] tamże 2001.
4. Zwiedzamy Nowy Jork. Przewodnik. [Współautor:] M. Spychalski. Gdańsk; New York: Axter; Pol-Am Publishers 1994, 127 s.
5. Absolutna amnezja. [Powieść]. Poznań.: Obserwator 1995, 246 s. Biblioteka „Czasu Kultury”, 12. Wyd. nast.: Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy 1998; Warszawa: Tchu Dom Wydawnictwo 2006. Dostępny w Internecie: Zob. link [dostęp 25 marca 2024].
6. Niebieska menażeria. [Opowiadania]. Warszawa: Sic! 1997, 289 s. Przedruk zob. poz. ↑.
Zawartość
7. Twórcze pisanie dla młodych panien. [Podręcznik]. Warszawa: W.A.B. 1999, 310 s.
8. Madame Intuita. [Wiersze]. Warszawa: Nowy Świat 2002, 78 s.
Przekłady
włoski
9. Alma. [Powieść]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie 2003, 136 s.
10. Kultura obrażonych. [Felietony]. Warszawa: W.A.B. 2003, 221 s.
11. Księga Em. [Dramat]. Wstęp: E. M. Grossman Warszawa: tCHu doM wYdawniczy 2005, 249 s.
12. Magiczne oko. Opowiadania zebrane. Warszawa: W.A.B. 2006, 461 s. Archipelagi.
13. My life as a rabbit. [Sztuka w jednym akcie]. Prapremiera (jako sztuka czytana): Reżyseria: I. Filipiak. Berkeley, University of California, Beatrice M. Bain Research Group 2006. Wersja polska zob. poz. ↑.
Wystawienia następne
14. Obszary odmienności. Rzecz o Marii Komornickiej. [Biografia]. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria 2006, 579 s. Portrety Kobiet..
15. Moje życie królicze. [Sztuka w jednym akcie]. Prapremiera (jako czytanie performatywne): Reżyseria: M. Warsicka. Olsztyn, Teatr im. S. Jaracza, Scena Margines 2013. Wersja angielska zob. poz. ↑.
16. Glorious outlaws. Debt as a tool in contemporary postcolonial fiction. [Eseje]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2016, 310 s. Transatlantic Studies in British and North American Culture, vol. 14.
Zawartość
17. Znikanie. [Esej autobiograficzny]. Kraków: Znak Litera Nova 2019, 505 s.
Nagrody
Zawartość
18. Sekret Rodziny Kociej. [Bajka dla dzieci]. Ilustracje: M. Drohomirecka. Warszawa: Stowarzyszenie Lambda Warszawa 2021, 44 s.
19. 1983. Maszynopisy. [Wiersze; Prozy]. Łódź: Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich Oddział w Łodzi 2023, 183 s., Biblioteka Domu Literatury w Łodzi, 9.
Zawartość
Artykuły w czasopismach i książkach zbiorowych, m.in.
Przekłady utworów literackich w antologiach zagranicznych
angielski
czeski
francuski
niemiecki
szwedzki
włoski
Prace redakcyjne
Omówienia i recenzje
• Ankieta dla IBL PAN 2010, 2024.