Marta Hermanowicz

(b. 1982) – a prose writer.

She graduated in Political Science from the University of Szczecin, the Tadeusz Gadacz School of Philosophy, and Art History at Collegium Civitas. She works in the advertising industry.

She took the grand prix at the 11^th International Short Story Festival (2015) for ‘Czysty Leo’ (‘Clean Leo’), and also won the Nothing Is What It Is competition (2020), organised during the 5^th Góry Literatury Festival.

Her full-fledged book debut, ‘Koniec’ (The End), came out in 2024 and was nominated for many prestigious literary awards. The fictional axis of the novel is the fates of Polish families deported to Siberia during World War II. Partly based on her own family history, and partly on archival materials from the KARTA Centre, Hermanowicz creates multilayered narratives in which the 1940s weave with the 1990s, and inherited trauma with everyday violence. The main protagonist, Malwina, growing up in Nowa Sola in the ‘recovered lands’, experiences the presence of spirits of the past and becomes a medium through which a collective incurable memory speaks. The author asks if a community can contend with problems of contemporary life if they have not dealt with their own history. As she stated in an interview: ‘I wonder where the limits of Polish martyrology lie, and if there is something beyond the dead and the spirits of the past that define Polish identity’.

Despite her modest output – The End remains her only book published to date – Marta Hermanowicz has gained acclaim from the literary critics and jurors of prestigious awards. Her debut was nominated for the City of Warsaw Literary Award (2025), the Polityka Passport (2024), Bestseller Empik Award (2024), was shortlisted for the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Award (2025) and took the Conrad Award (2025). This novel was also placed in the Book Institute’s New Books from Poland catalogue as a proposal for foreign publishers, and Hermanowicz herself is a participant in the CELA international talent development programme, through which her work will be translated into nine languages.