Grażyna Plebanek - is a novelist, columnist, author of screenplays, theatre plays and short stories. She is the author of the bestselling "Girls from Portofino", "Illegal Liaisons" and "Ms. Fury", which was published in France and where it received a readers' award. She is also the author of literary essays "Brussels, animalism in the city" and "Robber Maids". Her latest novel is entitled "Madmuazelka". She publishes in Polish, English, French and Dutch. Born in Warsaw, she lived in Stockholm for five years before moving to Brussels in 2005.
She is an author of screenplays in France and Poland for Netflix, Canal Plus and ARTE.
Plebanek graduated from the Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. She worked as a journalist for Reuters news agency and Poland’s biggest Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
She is a columnist for the prestigious Polityka weekly and Wysokie Obcasy Extra monthly.
A winner of the Golden Owls award for promoting Poland abroad, Plebanek also received the award of the Artistic Committee of the Wrocław Contemporary Theater and a special award in the 2nd drama competition of the Contact Zone for the play Ms Fury (premiered on May 12, 2018).
She is among the group of international artists whose portraits by the Belgian photographer Stephan Vanfleteren can be seen in a permanent exhibition in Brussels since 2009.
The book "Illegal liaisons" was chosen by These Little Words as Novel of the Year 2012 in Great Britain. It also received an excellent review in the prestigious Publishers Weekly. In 2013, a walk around Brussels was organized in the footsteps of the characters from the novel Illegal Liaisons. The walk was documented in the photos of Sabina Jaworek.
Involved in women's issues, education as well as social factors of cultural differences. She participates in numerous conferences, discussion panels and meetings. For years, she has been promoting Polish literature abroad, appearing as a guest at literary festivals. Among others, in January 2018, she attended the Writers Unlimited festival in The Hague (Netherlands), where she read her version of Ode to Joy - the European anthem. She also took part in the Passa Porta Festival in 2021.
In December 2017, in London, she met readers to discuss the book Conradology (Comma Press), to which she wrote a short story in English entitled “Mothers”. In 2017, in Brussels, she was a guest at an author's meeting organized at the European Parliament. In 2016, in Barcelona, she took part in the panel "How to foster identification with EU?" during the European Citizenship in Challenging Times conference. She was a guest at the IFOA international festival in Toronto in 2013, which was also attended by Steven King, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie. She attended meetings from the "Voices of Europe" series at Boston University at the Center for European Studies in 2013 and the "United in Diversity" conference in the same year. As part of the promotion of “Illegal Liaisons”, she met readers in New York, Chicago and Boston.
Constantly present in Polish literary life, Plebanek takes part in the most important festivals in Poland, e.g. Conrad Festival, Off Festival Short Story Festival in Wrocław, Apostrophe - the International Literature Festival, Big Book Festival or Festival Capital of the Polish Language in Szczebrzeszyn, where she meets with readers and takes part in discussion panels and runs the Summer School of Writing at the festival. She conducted writing workshops at the University of Silesia and the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin.
Member and co-founder of the Literary Union, an association of Polish authors.
