Katarzyna Boni

Katarzyna Boni was selected for the 2020 European Press Prize shortlist with ‘Addio pomodori: What will we lose in the climate crisis?’

Katarzyna Bori is a reporter and writer. She holds graduate degrees in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw and in Social Psychology from the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. She also studied at the Polish School of Reportage at the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw.

Katarzyna Boni has more than ten years of experience in freelance reporting and journalism. Her main focus was always on Southeast Asian countries (and Japan), where she spent several years of her life. In her early work, she mainly covered travel stories for Polish newspapers and magazines. With time though, her perspective shifted from travel to people. Her major interest lies in the capacity of people to deal with a given reality – be it a reality created by political decisions or natural catastrophes – and individual efforts to change that reality. She also writes about dealing with trauma, loss, and grief. Her articles appear in major Polish magazines – Duży Format; Pismo. Magazyn Opinii; and Książki. Magazyn Do Czytania.

In 2014, she published her first non-fiction book, Kontener, co-authored with Polish reporter Wojciech Tochman, portraying the fate of Syrian refugees in Jordan (Agora Publishing House, 2014).

Her second book, Ganbare! Workshops of Dying (Agora Publishing House, 2016), is a non-fiction book that provides a picture of the reality in Japan after the events of March 2011 – the earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima disaster. Ganbare! describes the struggles of Japanese people to rebuild their lives a few years after the catastrophe. It shows the resilience of those who were affected and the ingenious ways they came up with to deal with loss, trauma, shock, and grief. The book also provides an in-depth analysis of Japanese culture and beliefs which have shaped modern Japanese society.

Ganbare! Workshop of Dying won the Gryfia Award, the Polish Literary Award for Female Writers. It was also nominated for the Conrad Award (a literary award for debuting writers), the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for literary reportage, and Travelery – National Geographic Award (the magazine’s Polish edition).

Her latest book is slated for publication this coming May (also by Agora Publishing House). Auroville. The city from dreams tells the story of an international utopian community established in 1968 in the south of India with support from UNESCO. This city in the making belongs to all of humanity and everyone is invited to join. Katarzyna lived there for almost a year in order to see whether it is possible to shape reality with dreams and create a new, more conscious, society.

Moved by the destruction of the oceans caused by global warming, a phenomenon which she experienced with her own eyes being an avid scuba-diver, Katarzyna started to write about the climate crisis. She wanted to let people know about the damage she was witnessing. This subject area has been one of the main fields of focus of her work for past two years. Katarzyna’s texts were published on her personal website, as well as in Duży Format and Pismo, Magazyn opinii. For a year, she was a columnist for the online edition of Vogue. Her bi-weekly column discussed issues surrounding the threat that the changing climate poses to us, the emotional burden connected with it, and the actions we can take in order to mitigate it. 

As the climate crisis edges us into a new reality, Katarzyna investigates how we can deal with these changes, how we can deal with anxiety, and how we can find ways to live in this new world.

Alexey Polikovskiy

Alexey Polikovskiy was selected for the 2020 European Press Prize shortlist with ‘The Curse of Poverty.’

Alexey Polikovskiy was born on February 17, 1955 in Moscow.

Following the traditions of his family, he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute after school, but soon left it and, after working for a year as a postman, decided to do Germanic studies at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, which he graduated from in 1979.

In his third year he was taken on the staff of the popular youth magazine “Rovesnik”. His article about Ringo Starr was the first positive publication about the Beatles in the Soviet press.

During the years of deep stagnation Polikovskiy left the editorial office of “Rovesnik” and worked as a night watchman at the Pushkin Museum, as well as a librarian and a school teacher.

During “perestroika” he returned to journalism and became editor-in-chief of the magazine “Sport, Country and World” of the media holding “Woskresenie” and then editor-in-chief of the magazine “Home Computer” of the publishing house “Computerra” and tried to publish his own magazine “Island”.

Since 2000, he has been a columnist for Novaya Gazeta.

Alexey Polikovskiy is a multi-faceted journalist who writes on a high professional level about social problems, high technology, music and sports, but above all about people. The heroes of his interviews and essays were, among others, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Nemtsov, Maya Plisetskaya, Janusz Korczak, Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, Carl von Ossietzky, Irena Sendler, Beth Hart and others.

His texts “The Gilded Bastard” about Stalin monuments in modern Russia, “Voices of Saur-Grave” about the war in Ukraine and “Why Russia is not the West” were read by hundreds of thousands of people.

In 2014, he won the “Golden Pen” award of the Union of Journalists of Russia.

Alexey Polikovskiy is the author of 12 books, including

“Rock on Paveletskaya”, the history of an underground rock band in the USSR,

“Millionaire’s Wife,” a love story during the period of wild Russian capitalism,

“The journey of the shaman. Jim Morrison.”

“Waterloo Night”, a bright and passionately written antimilitaristic book, especially modern sounding in our time, swelling with a premonition of war,

“Moscow vs. Mordor”, a history of Moscow protests in 2011-2012,

“The Lion’s Garden,” a book about Leo Tolstoy.

After reading one of Alexei Polikovskiy’s articles, the famous Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote him a letter with the following lines:

«… in the only piece of yours the mind of a realist and the inspiration of a romantic, the pain for the self-esteem and mutual estrangement of people, and a mighty avalanche of emotions, in spite of the hopelessness that presses hard on everyone, which does not allow you to settle accounts with the epoch, for you are interested in everything on earth and everything of your own, and this does not allow you to lose and preach love of live, though you may not see it in yourself. We don’t have any writers like the one you can be – not a single one!”