Taciana Niadbaj
In residence: October - November 2022
Taciana Niadbaj is a writer, poet, translator, human rights activist and the current president of PEN Belarus. She was born in Polack, studied in Minsk (2000-2006), Vilnius and Lublin (2006-2011), worked in Warsaw (2011-2015). In 2015 she returned to Belarus, where she worked for independent media (Press Club Belarus), for Belarusian literature, culture and human rights (PEN Belarus) and coordinated other cultural, media and publishing projects. Taciana is the author of the poetry book Sirens Singing Jazz (Polotsk Labyrinths, 2014), for which she received the Maksim Bahdanovič Debut Award. She also translated Ewa Thompson's Songwriters of the Empire. Russian literature and colonialism (2009) into Belarusian, and co-translated Leszek Kolakowski Our Merry Apocalypse (2012), Anna Burzynska and Michal Paviel Markowski Twentieth-century literary theories.
When PEN Belarus was in 2021 banned in Belarus by the Belarusian authorities, Taciana was forced to leave her home country for security reasons. She now lives in Poland where she continues her work for PEN Belarus, Belarusian culture and human rights.