Ishbel Szatrawska

Born in 1981 in Olsztyn, Poland, Ishbel is a writer based in Kraków, Poland.

Her debut play, Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, appeared in the e-anthology Nasz głos, published by the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Kraków. Her next plays, The Hunt and Totentanz. Black Night, Black Death, were published in the renowned Polish theater periodical Dialog.

She has received stipends from the City of Kraków and the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw.

In 2021, she wrote the play The Life and Death of Mr. Hersh Libkin from Sacramento, CA, which was published by Wydawnictwo Cyranka in 2022.

In 2023, she published her first novel, Depth at Wydawnictwo Cyranka, under the patronage of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature.

Her plays have been shortlisted by and received awards from e.g. Berliner Festspiele, the Gdynia Dramaturgical Prize, the international EURODRAM competition, and the All-Polish Contest for STaging a Contemporary Polish Play. Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death was presented in September 2022 as part of the International Voices Project in Chicago, IL, and at English Theatre in Berlin, in May 2023. The novel Depth received the Wawrzyn Literary Award (main prize and reader’s award), the Krakowska Książka Miesiąca Award, it was longlisted for the 2023 Grand Continent Award and the 2024 Nike Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Joseph Conrad Literary Award 2024. Depth also received a stipend / tandem residency for the author and translator, Andreas Volk from Stiftung Genshagen in Germany. The book will be published in German by Voland & Quist in fall 2025.

Szatrawska also lead a 6-month course of creative writing as part of the Katowicka Runda Teatralna program organized by Katowice Miasto Ogrodów, during which the participants learned how to write a theater play. She also delivered several lectures in the field, e.g. for Ukrainian playwrights participating in an international program at Willa Decjusza in Krakow, Poland.