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 Swiss foundation Landis & Gyr Stiftung, 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 on September 15th, 2025. Only several days later the world theater premiere of Depth will take place: on September 28th, 2025 the theater performance directed by Alek Niemiro will be staged at Konstanz Theater.
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.
She is also the co-author of different side projects. On September 13th a theater premiere of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Krzyżacy (Teutonic Knights), directed by Jan Klata, will take place at the Stefan Jaracz Theater in Olsztyn. Klata and Szatrawska adapted the novel for stage. Together with Michał “Nihil” Kuźniak and Dominik Gac, she co-authored (as a lyricist) Kołowrót I and Kołowrót II, audio tracks which are part of the exhibition Sto nocnych zjaw at Manggha Museum in Krakow.