About the event

This year’s edition of the Eastern Express meetings will also feature a new addition—the symposium “The Power of Translation”, dedicated to the role of translators as guides between cultures, witnesses to history, and co-creators of literature. In times of war, crisis, and political tension, translation becomes not only work with language but also a means of building understanding and reimagining the world through words.

Programme

Opening of the Translation Symposium “The Power of Translation” on the 457th Anniversary of the Union of Lublin

Opening Remarks – Grzegorz Rzepecki, Director of Workshops of Culture in Lublin

Anna Lewicka-Koksanowicz – 16 Translations of Ukrainian Literature: A Summary of the LEE Project

LEE, or Literary Eastern Express, is a project co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme and an extension of the publishing activities of Workshops of Culture. Its aim is to promote contemporary Ukrainian literature in Poland and strengthen the presence of Eastern European culture within the international literary landscape. As part of the project, 16 books by Ukrainian authors representing different genres, generations, and aesthetic approaches have been translated and published. The core idea of the “Literary Eastern Express” project is to build lasting intercultural bridges through literature. We seek to introduce Polish readers to authors who have previously been absent from, or underrepresented in, the Polish publishing market. Our goal is to showcase the richness of contemporary Ukrainian culture and to include it in the broader European debate on identity, history, and contemporary social challenges.

Magdalena Nowakowska – Georgian Poetry in the Face of Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism

Magdalena Nowakowska is a Kartvelologist, cultural animator, and translator of Georgian and Polish literature, with more than a dozen published translations of fiction, drama, and poetry in Poland and Georgia. She studied music, Georgian philology, and journalism. She has lived in Tbilisi for over twenty years. She creates and manages events promoting joint cultural and social initiatives involving artists, curators, and activists from the European Union, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. She is the founder and mentor of the Polish-Georgian School of Translation at the Mieroszewski Centre. She has worked as a communications specialist for the United Nations mission in Georgia and at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tbilisi, as well as a correspondent for international media outlets. Her translation of Tamta Melashvili’s novel “Kos kos jeżyna” received the Book of the Year award from the magazine “Książki” in 2024, while her translation of Iva Pezuashvili’s “Zsyp” was selected as Book of the Month in 2023. She was nominated for the Gdynia Literary Prize in 2025.

Agnieszka Rembiałkowska – Lithuanian and Latvian Literature in Polish in the 21st Century (Who, What, and Where)

Agnieszka Rembiałkowska (born in 1980 in Włocławek) is a Baltic studies scholar, academic lecturer affiliated, among others, with the University of Warsaw, as well as a translator and editor. She has been publishing literary translations from Lithuanian (and, less frequently, Latvian) since 2005. She is the author of more than a dozen book-length translations, and her work has also appeared in literary journals including “Akcent”, “Elewator”, “Czas Literatury”, “Fabularie”, “Pismo”, and “Kultura Enter”, as well as in literary anthologies.

Together with Joanna Tabor, she edited the anthology of contemporary Lithuanian poetry “Pauzy w milczeniu” (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2023), featuring 31 Lithuanian poets and 16 translators. She regularly participates in translation seminars and workshops and has co-organised the Wiosna Poezji festival in Warsaw since 2016. She is a member of the Literary Translators Association.

She received the translation award of the international literary festival Poezijos pavasaris (2018) for her translations of poetry collections by Sigitas Geda, Nijolė Miliauskaitė (with Alina Kuzborska), and Vladas Braziūnas, as well as the Algis Kalėda Award (2022). She has been nominated for the European Poet of Freedom Award (2020, for her translation of Agnė Žagrakalytė’s poetry collection “Właśnie:” / “Štai:”), the Gdynia Literary Prize (2021, for her translation of Birutė Jonuškaitė’s novel “Maranta”), and the Ossolineum Prize for Poetry Translation 2026 (for her translation of Birutė Jonuškaitė’s poetry collection “Lista obecności”).

Bartosz Wójcik – Decolonial Practices in the Translation of Contemporary Poetry

Bartosz Wójcik is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) and a member of the Literary Translators Association. He is a co-creator of the Lublin Miasto Literatury Festival (2025), host of Uniwersytet Reggae at the Ostróda Reggae Festival, and a promoter of Anglophone Caribbean culture. His recent work includes translations of Mohammed el-Kurd’s poetry collection “Rifka” (Współbycie, 2025) and the poetry volume “Przenośny raj” by Trinidadian-British author Roger Robinson (Instytut Kultury Miejskiej, 2026). He is active in support of the Equality Union Association (“Unia Równości”), a non-governmental organisation whose statutory mission is to support the LGBTQ+ community. He is also co-guardian of the dog Mira.

Benediktas Januševičius – Ukraine at War in Lithuanian Translations

Benediktas Januševičius (born 1973) is a poet, prose writer, translator, and cultural animator. He has edited cultural periodicals including “Literatūra ir menas” and “Metai”, as well as festival anthologies such as “Žiemos poezija” and “Poezijos pavasaris”. He organises literary meetings and numerous visual poetry exhibitions. He also works as a photographer and creates film documentation of meetings with artists.

In 2002, together with D. Pocevičius, he founded the tekstai portal, and since 2014 he has run the Slinktys portal. He has published the poetry collections: “Veidas” (1992), “Šalkis” (1995), “12 kėdžių: eilėraščiai / daiktai” (1997), “Buto raktas” (1999), “o+6: eilėraščiai / daiktai” (2006), “Raugintu krauju” (2007), “Kiškis kiškiškai kiškena” (2008, with CD), “Žodžiai” (2016), and “Trumpiausias Benedikto Januševičiaus eilėraštis” (2019; a collection of concrete poetry).

He is a recipient of several literary awards, including the Young Yotvingian Prize. His works have been translated into English, Latvian, Polish, Russian, Belarusian, Slovenian, and Spanish. Polish translations of his work have appeared in the journal “Tekstualia”. He lives in the countryside in the Anykščiai district.

Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota – How to Translate from Yiddish When There Is No Yiddishland

Bella Szwarcman-Czarnota is a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy and the Postgraduate Programme for French Language Translators at the University of Warsaw. She worked at the Philosophy Editorial Department of PWN and in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute; she was also an editorial secretary of the “Biuletyn ŻIH” journal. She was a co-founder, and later an editor and columnist, of the Jewish magazine “Midrasz”. She is the author of eight books, including a family songbook, a music album recorded together with her daughter and sister, and the book “Świętujmy!”, co-written with her daughter and a friend. She coordinated and co-authored “Hagada kobiet” and has translated around 50 books from French, Russian, and Yiddish. For many years she has delivered lectures on biblical women at the Austrian Cultural Forum. She also teaches at the Jewish Open University. She is a recipient of the Fr. S. Musiał Award, the Jan Karski and Pola Nireńska Award, and the “Literatura na Świecie” Award.

Andrij Saweneć – The Translator of Ukrainian Literature as Editor: Practical Experiences

Andrij Saweneć (born 1977 in Kornyn, Ukraine) is a translator and translation scholar. He graduated from Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State Pedagogical University and the European College of Polish and Ukrainian Universities. He received his PhD at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, where he also taught. He is the author of the monograph “Poezja w przekładzie: »ukraińska« Szymborska” (2006) and numerous articles on translation studies.

His Ukrainian translations include, among others, novels by Ernest Hemingway and Salman Rushdie, as well as three selections of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry. He is the editor and translator of the Polish-Ukrainian poetry anthology “Lublin z dala, Lublin z bliska” (2017). His translations into Polish include, among others, Jurko Gudź’s poem “Barykady na Krzyżu” (2014), Mykola Riabchuk’s selection of essays “Poprzednie życie” (2018), the extended conversation “Worochtarium” by Yurii Andrukhovych, Oleksandr Boichenko, and Orest Drul (2019), and Oleksandr Irvanets’s novel “Charków 1938”. He is a co-editor of the Eastern Express publishing series.

Discussion: “The Social Status of Translators and Socio-Economic Aspects” – a discussion with invited speakers and participants

Moderator: Aleksandra Zińczuk

Aleksandra Zińczuk is a literary scholar, poet, essayist, social anthropologist, and translator. She is a cultural manager, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Kultura Enter”, and managing editor of the Workshops of Culture Publishing House. For her creative work and publishing initiatives, she has received, among others, the “Literatura na Świecie” Award and the Hryhorii Skovoroda International Literary Prize. For many years, she has been active in creating spaces for intercultural dialogue at the intersection of cultural heritage, history, art, and literature. Since the beginning of the war, she has been involved in providing assistance to Ukraine.

Details

When: July 1, Wednesday, 10.00-14.00
Where: Workshops of Culture, Grodzka 5a
Admission free

Certificates of participation in the event will be available on site.

Accessibility

PJM (Polish Sign Language)