Uważność, natchnienie, rzemiosło – spotkanie z Michałem Witkowskim

Michał Witkowski, born in 1975, is a writer and columnist, and a graduate of Polish Philology at the University of Wrocław. He made his debut in 1997 with the volume "Zgorszeni wstawą od stołów" (Outrageous Rise from the Tables), followed by the short stories "Copyright" (2001). His novel "Lubiewo" (2005) brought him acclaim, and since then, each book has been a success, including "Barbara Radziwiłłówna z Jaworzna-Szczakowej" (2007), "Drwal" (2011), "Zbrodniarz i dziewczyna" (Criminal and the Girl) (2014), "Fynf und cfancyś" (2015), and "Wymazane" (2017). In 2023, he published "Faith: An Autobiography," which won the Nike Award readers' poll. Witkowski has won numerous awards. He has been nominated for the Nike Award five times, received the Polityka Passport Award, received the Gdynia Literary Award for Lubiewo, and most recently (2025) received the Adam Mickiewicz Award for lifetime achievement. "Łódź Lectures on Poetics" is an initiative that dates back to 2018. It was then that Olga Tokarczuk, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature that same year, visited the Faculty of Philology at the University of Lodz for the first time. A transcript of the lectures delivered by the writer was included in the Nobel Prize winner's first book, published after she received this exceptional distinction. In subsequent years, the Faculty of Philology hosted inspiring meetings with figures such as Wiesław Myśliwski, Andrzej Stasiuk and Monika Sznajderman, Mariusz Szczygieł, Joanna Bator, and Dorota Masłowska. Thanks to the variety of speakers who visit our Faculty every year, we have had the opportunity to explore topics such as memory in relation to one's own life and work, the art of writing reportage, the power of emotion and imagination in literary work, and to observe the creative process of invited authors.