On 11 May, Budapest, Bratislava, Krakow and Prague welcomed the arrival of the fellowship holders in the spring edition of the international “Visegrad Literary Residency” programme. Four writers will carry out their projects and participate in meetings and literary events in Krakow. Villa Decius will be a temporary home to Krisztina Galgoczi, a Hungarian literary critic, Marek Debnar, a Slovakian essayist and reporter, Břetislav Ditrych, a Czech essayist, poet, prose and non-fiction writer, and Joanna Szczepanik, a Polish art critic, journalist and lecturer.
Marek Debnar (1979) – researcher, teacher, essayist and author of nonfiction books. After the studies of philosophy in Bratislava he wrote a dissertation about the author and the subject in philosophy and literature and received a PhD in Philosophy. At present he works as a university teacher for ethics and as a researcher for linguistics at the Faculty of Arts, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. He published several essays on literary theoretical and philosophical topics, critical pieces and one book systemizing the results of literary theoretical research and analysing their impact on the fıeld of philosophy. Having written short stories in Cracow twelve years ago derived from actual events and modified in a process of reiterate writing with different focus points, Marek Debnar will use his stay in Cracow to finalize these texts from a present perspective.
Břetislav Ditrych (1942) – essayist, nonfiction author, poet and prose writer with an educational background in economics and business management. He published numerous texts of different kinds: among them non-fiction books, particularly in the areas of history of aviation, sports, arts and regional history, four poetry collections, two works of long prose, short stories, two reportages, interviews and articles in concerning visual arts, literature and history. For his journalistic work he was awarded with the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize (2009), while for his outstanding nonfiction works he was awarded with the Miroslav Ivanov Prize (2007, 2012). In Krakow he will work on a novella about Jewish residents living in Krakow during and after the World War II.
Krisztina Galgoczi (1962) – literary critic and psychodrama assistant. Having studied drama theoretically and doing a PhD on modern drama from a gender perspective, she pursued her interest in history and her passion for drama and became both a teacher on the Holocaust and a psycho-dramatist. Previously she worked as a lecturer at the Department of Intercultural Studies and at the University of Theatre and Film Arts. Having lost her father in her early childhood under suspicious circumstances, she will edit and finalize a book about her search for truth and on search itself, based on a blog she wrote during her investigations.
Joanna Szczepanik (1977) – art critic, journalist and lecturer. She did a Master of Arts in Wroclaw and a PhD in Humanities in Warsaw. She is the author of several texts on subjects of contemporary culture and of the book dedicated to Slovenian artistic collective – Neue Slowenische Kunst. In her recent projects she dealt with contemporary Mexican art and the concept of the space and “genius loci” by means of interviews with contemporary Polish artists. Currently she is working as a freelancer – lecturer in Szczecin. As a continuation of a literary documentary project began in Budapest, she will work on a series of essays based on conversations with Polish writers on the topic of identity and creativity.
