Visegrad Literary Residency Program – Summer Edition
The pandemic and restrictions related to it forced us to postpone this year’s Spring Edition of the Visegrad Literary Residency Program to the summer holidays (July 1 – August 12). At that time, Villa Decius has once again become a home for four writers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, who could work on their current literary projects in the beautiful surrounding of the Decius Park.
Our for residents are:
Ondřej Buddeus (1984) is a Czech writer, translator, poet, organizer, editor, and essayist. He has published several books in a variety of genres including poetry, prose, multimedia experimentation, and literature for children. He was awarded the Jiří Orten Prize (2013) and the Magnesia Litera Prize (together with David Böhm, 2014) as well as nominated to several other literary prizes both nationally and internationally (e. g. Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, 2017). He was editor-in-chief of the literary journal Psí víno, from 2017 to 2019 he also led the Czech Literary Centre. He is currently working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
Anna Mécs (1988) graduated in Mathematics and Hungarian at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. After working in academic journalism, she now works as a creative writer. She was first published in 2015 in the revered literary periodical Élet és Irodalom, and her work has appeared in various other publications since. Her first book, Child Lock (Gyerekzár) was published in 2017, and she won the Margó Prize in 2018 for this collection of short stories. Her second book, Connection Error (Kapcsolati hiba) was published in 2020: a series of sad, absurd or funny interactions of digital technology and human beings.
Marta Sapała (1974) – journalist, reporter, freelancer. Cooperates with, among others, dwutygodnik.com and Znak Magazine. Her latest book Na marne (‘In vain’, Czarne Publishing House), a reportage on how food is treated, was nominated for the Grand Press Award in the 2020 Reporting Book category. Currently, she is working on a book about the right to breathe.
Jana Bodnárová (1950) – born in Jakubovany in the Liptovsky Mikulas County (Slovakia). She studied the art science and history at the Philosophical Faculty of the Komenius University in Bratislava and later worked as a preservationist at the State Historical Preservation and Protection Institute in Presov. She published 25 books of prose and poetry for adults and for children. Several of them were awarded with literary prizes. Her texts were translated to many European languages and to Arabic, Hindi and Chinese. She currently lives in Kosice, working as an independent writer, poet, dramatist, video performer and art historian.