Articles written by: Agnieszka Tworek

Agnieszka Tworek

Agnieszka Tworek graduated with honors from the University of Chicago and received a Ph.D. in French from Yale University. She was pensionnaire étrangère at the École normale supérieure (Rue d’Ulm). She has also studied at the Université Paris X Nanterre and at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell. She works on twentieth- and twenty-first century French theater and on the nineteenth-century French novel.

Monique Stalens: A Life Steeped in Polish Theater
2015 Vol. 7 No. 2 — Summer

Monique Stalens: A Life Steeped in Polish Theater

In 2010, the International Theatre Institute gave Monique Stalens the Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz Award. How fitting, because it was Witkacy (Witkiewicz) who spoke of theatre as a strange dream, unfathomable, unlike anything else in the world. Such was Stalens’ life.

Stuart Dybek: Writing Chicago, Memory, and Dreams
2014 Vol. 6 No. 3 — Fall-Winter / Books

Stuart Dybek: Writing Chicago, Memory, and Dreams

A poetic Babuszka: No word in English turns/a scarf into a grandmother

A Conversation with Stuart Dybek
2014 Vol. 6 No. 3 — Fall-Winter / Interviews

A Conversation with Stuart Dybek

Growing up in “a port of entry neighborhood,” Stuart Dybek added magic to realism in the divide between “American reality and immigrant soul.”

A Conversation with Joanna Trzeciak on Translating Wisława Szymborska + Tadeusz Różewicz
2014 Vol. 6 No. 2 — Summer / Interviews

A Conversation with Joanna Trzeciak on Translating
Wisława Szymborska + Tadeusz Różewicz

When she was eleven, Joanna Trzeciak sent Szymborska a poem, beginning a lifelong correspondence. To meet Różewicz, she plotted an accidental meeting in a park. A true lover of poetry obviously doesn’t just leave things to chance.

Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Sculpted Metaphors
2014 Vol. 6 No. 1 — Winter-Spring / Features

Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Sculpted Metaphors

Her monumental sculptures sometimes resemble fractured bedrock on the surface of the earth, but she can also craft cedar to resemble handmade lace. Agnieszka Tworek profiles the artist, and her work.

Salvaged Ruins, History, and Monika Zofia Pauli’s Environmentally Conscious Architecture
2013 Vol. 5 No. 3 — Fall / Features

Salvaged Ruins, History, and Monika Zofia Pauli’s Environmentally Conscious Architecture

Not only wars, argues Monika Zofia Pauli, but reckless human actions can destroy our historical environment.

She favors preservation rather than demolition: “…because the greenest building is one that is already built.”

As I Recall: Fireflies in the Night
2013 Vol. 5 No. 3 — Fall / Books

As I Recall: Fireflies in the Night

Mark and Sharon Duffield remember the fireflies that illuminated their childhood; Monika Zofia Pauli’s illustrations illuminate their book.