News

UNESCO has announced the designation of 49 new Cities to join its Creative Cities Network making for a total of 295 Creative Cities from 90 countries worldwide. Among these new Creative Cities, 3 have been designated as Creative Cities of Literature: Gothenburg, Sweden; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Vilnius, Lithuania. There are now 42 designated Creative Cities […]

“Reykjavík UNESCO Creative City of Literature celebrates its ten-year anniversary in 2021. Hosting the Cities of Literature Annual Meeting made this milestone birthday very special, and organising a hybrid meeting on this scale was highly educational. It will benefit both the network and Reykjavík City generally as we further develop this new way of working […]

Maarten van der Graaff from the Netherlands and Ostap Ukrainiets from Ukraine are this year’s residents of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature. They will work on their latest texts during a two-month stay at the Villa Decius. For them, it is a time of intensive work, exploring the city and developing contacts in the […]

Krakow, Gdańsk and Warsaw joined forces with the Literary Union Association and the Association of Literary Translators to jointly launch the Literary Residencies project. The literaryresidenciespoland.pl website is the first platform of its kind, fully devoted to creative residencies and fellowships for writers and translators. The project was inaugurated on the World Book and Copyright […]

As every year, Krakow UNESCO City of Literature joins the international celebrations of World Poetry Day. This year we move to the online reality and celebrate not only at the weekend. World Poetry Day is a holiday celebrated annually on March 21, established by UNESCO in 1999. Its aim is to support linguistic diversity through […]

How do booksellers in Edinburgh, Barcelona, Prague and other UNESCO Cities of Literature cope with the pandemic? What practices can Krakow bookshops boast in this respect? We invite you to take part in a cycle of virtual meetings of the booksellers’ industry where participants can share their knowledge and inspirations on the forum of 39 […]

Program experiments, the search for new media and strengthening close, albeit virtual, contact with the audiences were the main experiences of the cultural milieu in Krakow UNESCO City of Literature in 2020. At the outset of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, we rapidly prepared a toolkit to support the local cultural sector, aptly […]

Last year’s Opera Rara Festival was held just before the outbreak of the pandemic. The world was turned upside-down soon after, and music and culture were forced to completely change track. The festival returns in a new reality, with a quote from the Greek poet Sappho “Stand up and look at me, face to face, […]

One of the most eminent Polish prose writers, the most frequently translated Polish author and an outstanding resident of Krakow has just been honoured with the Act of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland declaring 2021 as the Year of Lem. There could be no better reason for Lem to become the literary patron […]

Space shared by Krakow’s cultural events organisers, art exhibitions, a bookshop with albums byKrakow’s artists, literary meetings of the UNESCO City of Literature, a new edition of the “Szymborska’s Drawer” exhibition, concerts, film screenings, an information point and a service centre for guests of Krakow’s most important festivals. This is how the Potocki Palace will […]

The UNESCO Cities of Literature network brings together 39 cities across 6 continents. The designation recognises excellence, calling upon cities to nurture creativity, support freedom of speech, and ensure literature reaches as wide and diverse an audience as possible. Cultural leaders from 39 cities met digitally for the network’s first online meeting (21-25 September), hosted […]

Ana Llurba from Argentina and Brynja Hjálmsdóttir from Iceland will spend two creative months in Krakow. The residents will work on their latest pieces, while contributing to the literary life of the city. In September and October, we will be joined by two extraordinary artists. Thanks to the Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature Residency […]