Dorota Kotas

(b. 1994) – a Polish prose writer and columnist.

The work of Dorota Kotas is known for humour, its focus on details, and its sharp bite. In her stories, she sensitively portrays marginalised social groups, often focusing on the peripheries of reality, describing protagonists that initially seem indifferent. In both her books and her other statements, Kotas brings up her neurodiversity and her belonging to queer society.

She made her debut in 2019 with ‘Pustostany’ (Vacant Houses), which the jurors of the Gdynia Literary Award called ‘the story of Robinson in Warsaw, a girl inhabiting an abandoned ruin near Szembek Square’ and ‘a contemporary remake of a Gothic novel’. This grotesque-melancholy tale centred on portraits of people on the margins and their small everyday rituals. 2021 saw Kotas’s next book, ‘Cukry’ (Sugars), in which she more directly spoke of her own experiences tied to neurodiversity and her personal family relationships. Her third book, ‘Czerwony młoteczek’ (The Red Hammer, 2023), continues her storytelling model, while putting more stress on the social role of the author and the demands of readers. Kotas’s work sits at the heart of the contemporary Polish debates on autofiction and using personal experience in literature – her last novel particularly gave rise to a broad and polarising critical discussion.

Kotas’s articles have appeared in Notatnik Literacki. She has also published in Teatr, Magazyn RTV and Znak. She wrote the introduction to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando in Tomasz Bieroń’s translation (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2023), called ‘O tym, że płeć nie istnieje’ (‘On the Non-Existence of Gender’). In an educational publication edited by Ewa Furgał, ‘Pasjonatki. O dziewczynach w spektrum autyzmu’ (Enthusiasts: Of Girls on the Spectrum of Autism, 2021) Kotas contributed a chapter on work.

Kotas’s debut novel received two prestigious prizes: the Conrad Award and the Gdynia Literary Award in the prose category. It also brought her a nomination for the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Award.

Her short prose has been translated into Spanish.