About
Scotia Gilroy is a writer and literary translator. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she is now based in Kraków, Poland. She holds a First Class Honours BA in English literature from Simon Fraser University and a diploma in Polish language and literature from the Jagiellonian University’s Centre for Polish Language and Culture. She was a mentee in the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorship in Norwich, England, in 2016-2017 (under the mentorship of Antonia Lloyd-Jones) and now works full-time as a translator of Polish literature into English. Her translations have appeared in journals such as Panel Magazine, Widma, Asymptote, B O D Y Literary Journal, Opowiadanie, Culture.pl, Przekrój Magazine and Tablet, as well as in the anthologies Conradology published by Comma Press (UK) and Visible published by Two Lines Press. Her translation of Henryk Schönker’s Holocaust memoir, The Touch of an Angel, was published by Indiana University Press (February 2021) and her translation of Elżbieta Kossewska’s book Polish Jews in Israel was published by Brill (May 2021). Her translation of Maciek Bielawski’s short story collection Doctor Bianco and Other Stories was published by the London-based publishing house Terra Librorum (October 2021) and was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize. Scotia divides her time between Krakow, Vancouver and the off-grid wilderness of Northern California.
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.
