Wioletta Greg

Koziegłowy and Rzeniszów

Born in 1974 in Koziegłowy, she grew up in the small village of Rzeniszów in the Jurassic Highland of southern Poland, a landscape of limestone, orchards and folk belief that runs through all her writing.

The Isle of Wight

In 2006 she left Poland for England and spent ten years in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, writing between two languages and two shores.

Lewes

She now lives in Lewes, on the river Ouse, where she continues to write poetry, prose and books for children.

The work

Between 1998 and 2012 she published several volumes of poetry before turning to prose. Swallowing Mercury, a novella of childhood in Communist Poland, was translated by Eliza Marciniak and longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Asymptote, The Guardian, Litro Magazine, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri and The White Review.

In 2012 the British Library recorded her poetry for Between Two Worlds: Poetry and Translation, a project funded by Arts Council England. Her writing has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Serbian, Slovenian, Lithuanian and Welsh.

Her recent books include Wilcza rzeka (Wolf River, 2021), the children’s book Lola i ptaki (Lola and the Birds, 2021) and Tajni dyrygenci chmur (The Secret Conductors of Clouds, 2024). Moving between poetry, fiction and writing for children, she continues to explore memory, migration and the lives shaped by them.