Magdalena Bielska

(b. 1980) – poet, short story writer.

She has published the poetry collections “Brzydkie zwierzęta” (Ugly Animals, 2006), “Wakacje, widmo” (Holidays, Phantom, 2009), “Miłość w zimie” (Love in Winter, 2013), “Czarna wyspa” (The Black Island, 2015), “Torfowy ogród z mostem i tygrysem” (Peat Garden with Bridge and Tiger, 2019) and “Poradnik dla niedawno zmarłych” (A Manual for the Recently Deceased, 2023). Her debut volume Ugly Animals received the Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna Award and was nominated for the City of Gdańsk’s European Poet of Freedom Literary Award (both in 2007). The author’s second book was a Kraków Book of the Month (2009) and received the Polish Book Publishers’ Association Prize (2010), while The Black Island was nominated for the Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Orpheus Poetry Prize (2016). For A Manual for the Recently Deceased the author won the Wisława Szymborska Award (2024); the volume was named a Kraków Book of the Month (2023) and received Bielska’s second nomination for the Orpheus Poetry Prize (2024).