On October 5th at 4:00 PM, we invite you to an author meeting with Anna Frajlich and Sławomir Jacek Żurek dedicated to the book "The Glass Ceiling of Language". 📚 Hosted by: Beata Dorosz Free admission! --------------------------- "The Glass Ceiling of Language" consists of thirteen in-depth conversations chronicling the life and work of poet Anna Frajlich, literally from her birth to the present day. Everything is meticulously presented and precisely documented. It is also a fascinating compendium of literary knowledge, richly illustrated with photographs, many of which are published for the first time. (prof. Ronald Meyer, Columbia University) "The Glass Ceiling of Language" is thirteen in-depth conversations; it is a "dialogue-based guide to the works and biography of Anna Frajlich – an outstanding poet living in New York. The most comprehensive, credible, fact-rich, source-based, and competently commented work to date. In a series of interviews conducted by Sławomir Jacek Żurek, a literary scholar and leading expert on Jewish issues in Polish literature, key topics include the triple identity of Polish-Jewish-American, the challenges and opportunities of exile, the clash of Polish-acquired perceptions with American culture, the adaptation to the foreignness of emigration, the difficult rules of self-realization in a world where only the best succeed, and finally – the significance of cities and places recorded in the poet's biography." (prof. Wojciech Ligęza, Jagiellonian University) Anna Frajlich – an émigré poet and Slavist. She was born in 1942 in the settlement of Katta Tałdyk near Osh in Kyrgyzstan (then USSR) as the child of a pair of Jewish Lvovians who moved deep into the Soviet Union (returning to Poland in 1946). She spent her youth in Szczecin, where she graduated from high school (1960). Between 1960-65, she studied Polish philology at the University of Warsaw. After her studies, she worked as a secretary for the blind writer Jacek Szczygieł and later, until 1969, under his direction in the editorial office of the magazine "Niewidomy Spółdzielca." A pivotal time in her biography, as in the lives of a significant segment of Polish intelligentsia, was the growing wave of state-inspired and orchestrated anti-Semitism following the Israeli-Arab war of 1967, commonly referred to as "March 1968." As a result of this anti-Semitic campaign, Frajlich emigrated with her husband and young son at the end of 1969, first through Vienna to Rome, and then to New York. She worked as a Polish language lecturer at Stony Brook State University and in the epidemiological laboratory of New York City's Center. Since 1972, she has published poems in London's "Wiadomości." Between 1977–1981, she collaborated with the Polish section of Radio Free Europe. Since 1982, she has been teaching Polish literature at Columbia University in New York. In 1991, she defended her doctoral dissertation in Slavic studies at New York University. She has published nine volumes of poetry. These include lyrical poems, often erotic, as well as works addressing various aspects of emigration, the traumatic sense of rejection, overcome through contact with the native language, which is the material of her poetry and restores a sense of connection with the lost homeland. Many of Frajlich's poems critically and interestingly address current national issues, seen from an émigré perspective. Images and other works of art play a significant role in her poetry, serving as sources of inspiration and pretexts for philosophical questions. She is the laureate of the Kościelski Foundation Award (1981), the Władysław and Nelly Turzański Foundation Award (2003), and the Polish Writers Abroad Association Award (2015). "Her literary roots are deeply embedded in Polish, Jewish, and American culture, but it is in the Polish language that she finds her haven and belonging," stated the jury's announcement for the last of the mentioned awards. She was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2002). Honorary ambassador of Szczecin (2007). Sławomir Jacek Żurek – philologist and literary historian, professor of humanities, full professor at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. He graduated in Polish philology from KUL in 1991. He later earned his doctorate in humanities at the Jagiellonian University in 1997. He obtained his habilitation in 2006 and the title of professor of humanities in 2010. Currently, he serves as the head of the Department of Literature and Polish Language Didactics and the Laboratory of Polish-Jewish Literature at KUL. He is also the director of the International Center for Research on the History and Cultural Heritage of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe.
