Anna Kańtoch

(b. 1976) – author of crime novels and fantasy books for adults and young adults.

Orientalist by education. Author of film and book reviews for the online magazine “Avatarae”, publishes features in the magazine “Esensja” and short stories in “Fahrenheit”. A member of the Silesian Speculative Fiction Club.

She gained recognition thanks to the novel “Czarne” (Black); the book encourages us to reflect how we perceive the world around us. The author guides the readers into the murky recesses of the human mind by allowing them to penetrate the emotions and motivations of protagonists struggling with memories which can influence the present.

Each volume of the cycle “Przedksiężycowi” (The Pre-Lunars) develops the story of a city called Lunapolis and its residents. This is a science-fiction trilogy which discusses themes including art as the ultimate value, aspiring to perfection, genetic engineering and its ethics, and explores various aspects of human nature in the context of the world of the future, crafted with its technologies.

The books “Wiosna zaginionych” (The Spring of the Missing), “Lato utraconych” (The Summer of the Lost) and “Jesień zapomnianych” (The Autumn of the Forgotten) – which constitute the series about retired policewoman Krystyna Lesińska – feature the tension characteristic of Anna Kańtoch’s writing. The author constructs an atmosphere of dread as she writes about topics related to moral dilemmas, facing the past, and fear which wreaks havoc on the psyche, while also describing the everyday and the Silesian traditions embedded in her setting. Her short stories have been translated into Russian and Ukrainian and have been anthologised in the collections “Harda Horda” (The Proud Horde, 2019), “Harde Baśnie” (Proud Tales, 2020) and “Harde Bestie” (Proud Beasts, 2024), to which the most prominent female writers of speculative fiction in Poland contributed dark, mysterious and ambiguous stories.

Anna Kańtoch is the laureate of the European Science Fiction Society’s Encouragement Award for the most promising young creator (2007). She is a five-time winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award: once for a novel (in 2010, for the first volume of The Pre-Lunars), and four times for short stories: “Światy Dantego” (Dante’s Worlds, 2009), “Duchy w maszynach” (Ghosts in the Machines, 2011), “Człowiek nieciągły” (The Discontinuous Man, 2014) and “Sztuka porozumienia” (The Art of Agreement, 2015). In 2013 she received the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award for the novel Black. In 2018, at the International Festival of Crime Fiction, she won the Janina Paradowska Special Award (given as part of the High Calibre Award) for the novel “Wiara” (Faith) and a Gold Distinction of the Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award for the novel “Niepełnia” (Unfullness). She was also awarded the High Calibre Award for the novel The Spring of the Missing (2021).