Michał Olszewski

Writer, journalist, publicist. He graduated from Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University. He has published short stories, critical essays and reviews in literary magazines. He was a journalist of the Krakow issue of Gazeta Wyborcza. He is the author of many prize-winning reportages. His prose debut was a collection of short stories Do Amsterdamu (To Amsterdam) (2003), which received the first award in the 3rd edition of the competition “Znak-Proza” organised by the Znak publishing house. In 2005 his second book Chwalcie łąki umajone (Let’s Praise the Meadows of May) and in April 2009 Low-Tech was published. Olszewski’s prose is immersed deeply in the concrete social context, but it also asks more general questions about life in contemporary Poland and the transformation being witnessed by us. In one of his articles, the author wrote: „Poland strives for the better and crumbles into dust at the same time; it holds its head high, although it is knee-deep in the mud.” As a representative of the young generation, he stated: „Traditional guideposts – faith, family, patriotism – have vanished and now in the ground there are only empty holes that I have to fill in on my own, although nobody taught me how to do this”.

At the Conrad Festival he will conduct a meeting with Mathias Göritz and Serhij Żadan during the Book Fair (7 November, Sunday, 12:00 a.m., ul. Centralna 41a).