Sylwia Chutnik

(b. 1979) – culture studies scholar; prose writer, columnist; feminist, social activist; promoter of literacy and urban guide.

She graduated in culture studies and gender studies at the University of Warsaw. She is also an activist and president of MaMa Foundation, which works to improve the situation of mothers in Poland.

She debuted in 2008 with the novel “Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet” (A Pocket Atlas of Women). The book combines stories of four people living in a Warsaw apartment house – a young woman from the fringes of society, a man of indeterminate gender identity, an elderly female participant of the Warsaw Uprising and a rebellious teenager – with quasi-sociological descriptions of female groups in their natural habitats (the market, the doctor’s surgery, the housing estate). It all forms a guide to the kind of Warsaw that cannot be found in tourist brochures; it is an uncompromising, intensely feminist study of the condition of the least affluent, most marginalised contemporary residents of the Polish capital.

In the next novel, “Dzidzia” (Diddums, 2010), realism succumbs to surrealism and the grotesque. The change in poetics, however, does not weaken the author’s critical intentions. This time she sets the book in Gołąbki near Warsaw, where a sixteen-year-old disabled girl lives with her mother, completely dependent on her. Dzidzia’s disability (the protagonist has no limbs, suffers with hydrocephalus and cannot speak) means she has no way to protest against the symbolic “functions” or roles foisted on her, for example that of a punishment for her ancestors’ wartime sins. The disabled child functions like a catalyst for violence, and her “kaleidoscope” eyes reflect all the Polish vices. The novel’s language is colloquial, seemingly incongruous with the difficult themes the author discusses.

In her work, Chutnik is unafraid of difficult topics. She writes about history and culture, refers to feminist issues and concepts of gender. She often focuses on questions of the anthropology of the everyday. Her book “Dintojra. Czasami największą zemstą jest po prostu przeżyć” (Vendetta. Sometimes the Greatest Revenge Is Just to Survive, 2024) includes eleven short stories featuring people relegated to the margins, lonely, disillusioned, abandoned. The book interweaves realism and the absurd, the everyday with profound reflection, and pain with humour and irony.

Chutnik, who is an urban guide by profession, also published an unconventional guide to Warsaw, “Warszawa kobiet” (Women’s Warsaw, 2011). It outlines routes around Chutnik’s chosen areas of Warsaw, but most of all – proposes that we walk around a city where stories of women who used to live there: sculptors, teachers, writers are hidden.

Sylwia Chutnik is also a playwright; her works include “Muranooo” (at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw and Itim Theatre Ensemble in Tel Aviv), “Aleksandra. Rzecz o Piłsudskim” (Aleksandra. A Piece about Piłsudski, at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Wałbrzych) and “Wanda” (together with Patrycja Dołowy, at the Teatr Stary in Kraków), as well as the radio drama “Piwnica” (The Basement, premiered on Channel 3 of the Polish Radio in 2014). She provided introductions to several books translated into Polish, such as Jean Lindeloff’s The Continuum Concept (translated by Cezary Urbański, 2018) or The Complete Peanuts 1991-1992 by Charles M. Schulz (translated into Polish by Michał Rusinek, 2019). She also created audiobooks published in the series “Bajki mają moc” (Fairytales are Powerful), for example “Nieśmiałek” (Timid, 2023), “Nocne mieszkanie” (The Flat at Night, 2023), “Diablica Rokita” (Rokita the Devilette, 2023). She was the editor of books including “Zapisane w ciele” (Written in the Body, with Patrycja Dołowy and Iwona Pijanowska, 2014) and “Kwestia charakteru. Bojowniczki z getta warszawskiego” (A Question of Character. Female Fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto, with Monika Sznajderman, 2023). Her texts have also appeared in anthologies, for example in a collection of short stories inspired by Dawid Podsiadło and Kaśka Sochacka’s album “tylko haj”. Her columns have been published in “Polityka”, “Wysokie Obcasy” and the monthly “Pani”.

Sylwia Chutnik is a grant holder from Homines Urbani (2008), the Lithuanian Books Institute (2009), the 7^th edition of the Young Poland Scholarship Programme from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2010), the City of Warsaw (2010) and the Goethe Institute (2010). She has been nominated for the 2007 title of the Pole of the Year by “Gazeta Wyborcza” and the 2008 Woman of the Year by Glamour, as well as the “Okulary Równości” Award in 2012, the Female Varsovian of the Year award (2018, 2021), and for the Nike Literary Award three times, for A Pocket Atlas of Women (2009), “Cwaniary” (Hustlerettes, 2013) and “W krainie czarów” (In Wonderland, 2015). In 2008 she won Polityka’s Passport Award in the Literature category.