TRANSLATOR, POET, ART HISTORIAN

Anna Błasiak

Studied Art History in Warsaw, Film Studies in Kraków and Arts Policy and Management in London. Translated over 50 books from English into Polish (mainly children’s books, including Anthony Horowitz’s South By South East) and fiction and non-fiction from Polish into English (by Mariusz Czubaj, Wioletta Grzegorzewska, Jan Krasnowolski, Kaja Malanowska, Daniel Odija, Anna Augustyniak, Mirka Szychowiak, Irit Amiel, Renia Spiegel and Maciej Hen [some of them as Anna Hyde]). Also translated some poetry into Polish (by Maria Jastrzębska, Mary O’Donnell, Nessa O’Mahony, Martina Evans, Vesna Goldsworthy, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, Tishani Doshi and Pascale Petit) and into English (by Mirka Szychowiak, Radosław Wiśniewski, Edward Pasewicz, Rafał Gawin, Joanna Fligiel, Robert Kania, Aneta Kamińska and Łucja Dudzińska). Her translation of Maciej Hen’s novel According to Her was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize in 2023. Her translation of Radosław Wiśniewski’s long poem Psalm to Saint Sabina won the inaugural Trafika Europe’s Andrew Singer Prize for Verse in 2025, while translation of the excerpt from Daniela Odija’s and Wojciech Stefaniec’s graphic novel Stolp was shortlisted for the TE prize for prose in the same year.. She worked in museums and a radio station, ran magazines, wrote on art, film and theatre. She writes poetry in Polish (Więź, Kwartalnik artystyczny, Dekada literacka, ArtPapier, Kwartalnik Szafa, Śląska Strefa Gender, Nowy BregArt, Obszary Przepisane, Inter, WydawnictwoJ, Helikopter) and in English (Exiled Ink e-Mag,The Blue Nib, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Queer Riveter, Impspired Magazine, The High Window, The Red Fern, Trafika Europe, The Amphibian and Modern Poetry in Translation). Published in several anthologies in Polish, English and Romanian. Also translated into Spanish, Slovene and Turkish. Her dual language collection with photographs by Lisa Kalloo Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime was published in 2020 by K.I.T Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów in Poland and Holland House Books in the UK. Lili, Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation with Anna Blasiak, a book-length interview with the Holocaust survivor Lili Pohlmann was published in the same year (Holland House Books). Her second bilingual collection Rozpętanie / Deliverance (with Lisa Kalloo’s photographs) was out in September 2024 (Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich Oddział w Łodzi / Holland House Books). She is the Managing Editor of the European Literature Network and one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki. She runs a poetry-in-translation column Poetry Travels on the ELNet, as well as a blog devoted to Polish literature The Polka. She works as the Head of Literature at the Polish Cultural Institute in London and also runs a small indie publishing house Sideways Press. She lives in Ramsgate in the UK.