READINGS (3) Zofia Baldyga, Jake Goetz, Olga Stehlíková

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  Zofia Baldyga

  Zofia Bałdyga is a poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections in Polish: Passe-partout (2006), Współgłoski (2010), Kto kupi tak małe kraje (2017), and Klimat kontynentalny (2021). This year, her first Czech-language collection, Poslední cestopisy (nominated for the Magnesia Litera award for poetry), was published by Fra. She studied South and West Slavic Studies at the University of Warsaw and is currently studying social and pastoral work at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University. She translates contemporary Czech and Slovak poetry into Polish (including works by Milan Děžinský, Kamil Bouška, Jana Bodnárová, and the anthologies *Sousedky – 10 českých básnířek* and *Sousedky – 10 slovenských básnířek*). In 2021, she received the *Literatura na Świecie* magazine award in the category for emerging translators. She also works as an intercultural mediator and lives in Prague.

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  Jake Goetz

  Jake Goetz is a poet and researcher who lives and works on the unceded lands of the Gadigal People (Sydney’s Inner West). He has published three collections of poetry: meditations with passing water (Rabbit, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance; Unplanned Encounters: Poems 2015-2020 (Apothecary Archive, 2023); and most recently, Holocene Pointbreaks (Puncher & Wattmann, 2024). He is currently a Research Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society in Munich.

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  Olga Stehlíková

  Olga Stehlíková works as a freelance writer, book editor and critic. She has edited dozens of books of poetry and prose for various Czech publishing houses and her poems have appeared in many Czech and foreign literary magazines. Her debut book of poetry, Týdny (Weeks, Dauphin 2014), won the Magnesia Litera Book Prize for poetry. Her second collection of short poems Vejce/Eggs was published in 2017 in a unique edition, together with an LP album with music by Tomáš Braun. Her third collection was An Exclamation Point as High as a Pole (2018). Her fourth collection, The Siren’s Song, was published in 2022. She also published separately a single poem "What a Mother Speaks of When She is Silent," in 2021. Olga’s poems have been translated into seventeen languages. She has also published six award-winning children’s books and was awarded the first Critic of the Year Award in 2018. Though the Sky Is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat is the first comprehensive selection of her poems to be published as a book in English translation.