About
Scotia Gilroy is a Polish-English translator specialising in literary fiction, contemporary poetry, children’s books, academic articles, and texts for art galleries and museums. She’s an alumna of the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorship in Norwich, England, and the BCLT’s summer school for literary translators.
Her translation of Doctor Bianco and Other Stories by Maciek Bielawski was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize in 2022, and her translation of No. 5 Bubblegum Street by Mikołaj Pasiński (illustrated by Gosia Herba) was shortlisted for a Society of Authors Award in 2025.
Her first novel translation, Hexes of the Deadwood Forest by Agnieszka Szpila, was published in 2026 by Penguin Random House (USA) and Bonnier Books (UK).
Her translations of Polish poetry include poems by Joanna Łępicka (published by Versopolis), Emilia Konwerska (presented at the Miłosz Festival in Kraków in 2026), Katarzyna Szweda (presented at Café Europa in Nairobi), and Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz (published in Wet Grain Magazine and HUS Magazine and presented at the Miłosz Festival in Kraków in 2025 and the Berlin Poetry Festival in 2026).
Her translation of the short story “Mamas” by Grażyna Plebanek was included in the anthology Conradology published by Comma Press.
She has translated two non-fiction books: the Holocaust memoir The Touch of an Angel by Henryk Schönker (published by Indiana University Press) and Polish Jews in Israel by Elżbieta Kossewska (published by Brill). Her other non-fiction translations include an excerpt of The Pepper Forgers by Monika Sznajderman (included in the anthology Visible published by Two Lines Press), an excerpt of Wherever You Throw Me by Dionisios Sturis (published in Asymptote), an excerpt of Mordor’s Coming to Eat US: A Secret History of the Slavs by Ziemowit Szczerek (published in Asymptote), and many articles on culture, literature, music, film and visual art published on the Culture.pl website and in the English version of Przekrój Magazine.
She frequently translates texts for cultural institutions and art galleries, including the Polish Book Institute, the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the Museum of Art in Łódź, BWA Wrocław, and the National Museum in Kraków.
Her own poems and short stories have been published in literary journals including The Mobile Library, Armstrong Literary Journal (The Queens Review) and The High Window.
She’s a member of the British Society of Authors, the American Authors Guild, and the Polish Literary Translators Association.
Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Scotia Gilroy is now based in Kraków, Poland. She studied English literature at Simon Fraser University (graduating with First Class Honours), and Polish language and literature at the Jagiellonian University’s Centre for Polish Language and Culture.
Featured Work
Doctor Bianco and Other Stories
"Doctor Bianco and Other Stories" is a collection of short stories by the Polish writer Maciek Bielawski, translated by Scotia Gilroy. Written in terse, spare, unaffected prose devoid of sentimentality, the nineteen stories in this collection gradually reveal the portraits of various people inhabiting one particular apartment building in an unspecified Polish town. The gritty, harsh realities faced by Bielawski’s protagonists are at times darkly funny and other times gut-wrenchingly sad. Bielawski sets up a magnifying glass on a small corner of Polish life and allows us to glimpse fascinating, surreal scenes from a tangle of human lives whose heartbreak, despair and various anxieties might feel surprisingly familiar to readers from any walk of life.
"Brilliant, insightful snapshots of everyday reality."
– Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature
"Bielawski’s characters circulate in a greyish humdrum world, but their hopes and concerns bleed out of the page and become ours in these strange and endearing fictions."
– Jonathan Gibbs, author of The Large Door
"Although the emotions in Bielawski’s stories are described with subtlety, there’s a great intensity to them – as there should be in all good short stories."
– Mateusz Matyszkowicz, Polish National Radio
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Maciek Bielawski was born in Świdnica, Poland. His novel Twarde parapety (Hard Windowsills) was published in Poland in 2016, followed by his collection of short stories Doktor Bianko i inne opowiadania (Doctor Bianco and Other Stories) in 2019. He won the main prize for the best short story during Poland’s 13th International Short Story Festival in Wrocław. The publication of Doctor Bianco and Other Stories by Terra Librorum (October 2021) is the first time his writing has appeared in English.
Other Works
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Hexes of the Deadwood Forest
2026
