Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz will receive Jiri Theiner Award
MARKÉTA GOETZ-STANKIEWICZ
Literary and theatre historian and critic, editor, translator, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz comes from Místek, in 1948 Markéta and her parents left for Canada. She won a scholarship at the University of Toronto (where she received an MA in 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1957) and became a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; her publications include works on contemporary Czech, German and Polish literature. She married the Polish philosopher and political scientist W. J. Stankiewicz, who had served in the British Liberation Army during the Second World War. Between 1975 and 1989 she returned to Czechoslovakia every year. A brave facilitator of contacts between banned writers and their friends in the West, she also prepared works by banned writers for publication abroad, as well as writing about and translating them.
In 1988, in a ceremony conducted in secret in the flat of Ivan Klíma, Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz received Ordo libri bohemici (the Order of the Czech Book) from Czech dissident writers. Her essays on Czech writers and dramatists have appeared in books including The Silenced Theatre: Czech playwrights without a stage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1979); this volume includes discussions of works by Václav Havel, Pavel Kohout, Ivan Klíma, Josef Topol and Ladislav Smoček, among others. She is editor of The Vaněk Plays: four authors, one character (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 1987), Good-bye, Samizdat: twenty years of Czechoslovak underground writing (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1992) and (with Philippe Carey) Critical Essays on Vaclav Havel (New York: G. K. Hall 1999).
In 1993 Literature and Politics in Central Europe: Studies in Honour of Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz was published (eds. Leslie Miller, Klaus Petersen, Peter Stenberg. Columbia: Camden House 1993). The volume includes contributions by Ivan M. Havel, Zdeněk Neubauer, Ivan Klíma, Vilém Prečan, Jiřina Šiklová and Josef Škvorecký, among others. Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz is currently working with Paul Wilson on a book entitled Havel on Theatre. Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz is a talented, brave, remarkable lady who has contributed to the promotion and dissemination of Czech literature over many decades.
| Markéta Götz-Stankiewicz with Ordo Libri Bohemici |
