Urszula Honek

Born in Poland in 1987, Urszula Honek is an acclaimed poet and writer. In 2016, she published her first poetry collection, Sporysz (Mutterkorn). Her second collection, Pod wezwaniem (Anrufung), followed in 2018, and her third, Zimowanie (Überwintern), appeared in 2021. All three works were finalists for the K.I. Gałczyński Orfeusz Poetry Prize.

Honek’s short story collection Białe noce (German: Weiße Nächte) consists of thirteen stories portraying various hardships endured by a group of people who grew up together in a village in the Polish Carpathians. Each story focuses on a different character and explores how they manage – knowingly or unknowingly – to cope with poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality, and an overarching sense of hopelessness, survive it, or simply exist through it. The English translation is by Kate Webster; the German translation by Renate Schmidgall. The book was nominated for the 2024 International Booker Prize and won the Witold Gombrowicz Literary Prize and the Kościelski Prize in 2023.

Honek is a recipient of the Grand Prix of the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Competition and has been awarded, among others, the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Prize, the Adam Włodek Prize, and the Stanisław Barańczak Prize as part of the Poznań Literary Award. She also received fellowships from the Maria Anna Siemieńska Grazella Foundation (2016) and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2017). In 2025, she was nominated for both the K.I. Gałczyński Orfeusz Poetry Prize and the Wisława Szymborska Prize.

Her most recent work, her fourth poetry collection Poltergeist, was published in 2024.