Jan Škrob, who gained a monthly scholarship in the residence house Cité internationale des arts, is in residence in Paris supported by the Czech Literary Centre, the section of the Moravian Library in Brno. The Czech Literary Centre offers stays to winners (or finalists) of the Jiří Orten Award for authors under 30 years. In addition to the Czech Literary Centre, the Union of Czech Booksellers and Publishers and the Czech Centre Paris also participate in financing and securing the residence. During his one-month stay, Škrob will work on his next poetry collection, which should be a “sequel” to his dystopic second book Reál (Reality, 2018). The poet’s author’s reading took place on 27 August in the Czech Centre in Paris.

In the summer, prose writers Tereza Semotamová and Jan Němec went on a residential stay in Wannsee, Germany. In May, Němec was finishing there his new novel Možnosti milostného románu (Possibilities of a Love Novel), which will be published on 24 September in Host. In August, Semotamová was working there on a novel with reportage elements, for which she conducted research in Berlin, and on a comic book about pay inequality. Residents stay in Berlin thanks to the partnership and cooperation of the Czech Literary Centre with Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.

Profiles of the residents:

Jan Škrob (1988) is a poet and translator. He made his debut with the collection Pod dlažbou (Under the Surface, 2016), for which he was nominated the DILIA Litera Award for discovery of the year. In 2018 he published his new collection of poetry entitled Reál (Reality) which was nominated for the 2019 Jiří Orten Award. His poems were awarded 3rd place at the Czecho-Slovak competition Poems 2018. He won joint first prize together with Bastian Schneider at the Dresden Poetry Award. He lives in Prague.

Jan Němec (1981) holds the European Union Prize for Literature (2014) and the Czech Book Award (2014), is nominated for Magnesia Litera (2014) in the category of prose and for the Josef Škvorecký Award (2014) and the Jiří Orten Award (2010) ). His work, especially the most successful Dějiny světla (A History of Light, 2013), dedicated to František Drtikol, has been published in numerous translations.

Tereza Semotamová (1983) studied radio and television dramaturgy and screenwriting at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno and German language and culture at Masaryk University in Brno. She received her doctorate from JAMU in Brno for her dissertation on German radio plays from the 1950s. She currently devotes her time to translating German literature, journalism and her own writing. She contributes to the Czech-German website for the Goethe Institute in Prague and has written dozens of radio plays for Czech Radio. In 2015 she published her debut novel, Počong anebo O pinoživosti lidské existence (Pochong or On the Drudgery of Human Existence), which she wrote with Jakub Vítek. Her novel Ve skříni (In the Cupboard) was published in 2018 and was nominated for a Magnesia Litera Award in the prose category.