About
Scotia Gilroy is a translator of Polish literature into English and a writer of prose and poetry.
Her published translations include Doctor Bianco and Other Stories by Maciek Bielawski (published by Terra Librorum), Polish Jews in Israel by Elżbieta Kossewska (published by Brill), the Holocaust memoir The Touch of an Angel by Henryk Schönker (published by Indiana University Press), an excerpt of Wherever You Throw Me by Dionisios Sturis (published in Asymptote), an excerpt of Mordor’s Coming to Eat Us by Ziemowit Szczerek (published in Asymptote), Crop Rotations by Aleksander Młynarczyk-Gemza (published by Pamoja Press), an excerpt of The Pepper Forgers by Monika Sznajderman (featured in the anthology Visible published by Two Lines Press), and the short story Mamas by Grażyna Plebanek (featured in the anthology Conradology published by Comma Press).
Her translations of Polish literature (poems, short stories, and novel excerpts) have appeared in journals such as Panel Magazine, Widma, Asymptote, B O D Y Literary Journal, Opowiadanie, Culture.pl, Przekrój Magazine and Tablet.
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, the Association of Applied Graphic Designers, and the National Museum in Kraków.
Her translation of Doctor Bianco and Other Stories by Maciek Bielawski was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize in 2022.
Her own poems and short stories have been published in Reflex Fiction, Sylvia Magazine, The Mobile Library, and Armstrong Literary Journal.
Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Scotia Gilroy is now based in Kraków, Poland. She holds a BA in English literature (First Class Honours) 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).
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.
