Agata Tuszyńska

Dear Guests, we are glad to invite you!
Tomasz Kucharski, Mayor
of the Praga-Południe District of Warsaw,
the Szaserów Housing Cooperative

together with the Piwnica Poetycka ENS Foundation invite you to the 31st meeting in the series “Our Guests”

whose heroine will be:
Agata Tuszyńska
Writer, poet, reporter
“Czarna torebka…” (The Black Handbag)
and conversations about creativity, memory and longing…
An evening
on the eve of the 81st anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
with the special participation of
Janusz Tylman
Hosted by
Anna Bojarska and Marek Urbański

Thursday, 18 April 2024, 6 pm; Kredens pod Oknami, 13 Szklanych Domów Street, free admission,

Agata Tuszyńska

Writer, poet, reporter, daughter of the well-known sports reporter Bohdan Tuszyński and the journalist Halina Przedborska. She graduated from the Faculty of Theatre Studies at the State Drama School (PWST) in Warsaw. She lectures at the University of Warsaw. She is the author of books on theatre and of biographies, among others of Maria Wisnowska, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Irena Krzywicka. Her latest autobiographical book, “Rodzinna historia lęku” (A Family History of Fear), published by Wydawnictwo Literackie, was warmly received (nominated for the Prix Médicis, published by the French publisher Grasset, it enjoyed international success). Among the author’s achievements is the Ksawery Pruszyński Prize, awarded by the Polish PEN Club.

A theatre historian by training, she took her doctorate at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She worked as a researcher at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences from 1987 to 1992. Since the 1990s she has taught students her reporter’s craft – she currently runs seminars at the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw and at the Literary and Artistic Studio of the Jagiellonian University.

“…The writer went on delving into the history of her ancestors and their wartime fates, the result of which was ‘Czarna torebka’, published in April 2023 – the story of a handbag hidden for decades in the author’s family home. It belonged to her Jewish grandmother Dela, and it was with this very handbag that Dela and her daughter Halinka left the ghetto.

Tuszyńska is a winner of the Ksawery Pruszyński Prize of the Polish PEN Club for outstanding achievements in reportage and non-fiction, the Gloria Artis medal for Merit to Culture and the French Order of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Korean and Macedonian. Since March 2022 she has been a columnist for the Polish edition of Vogue.”