Joanna Bator is a writer and academic born in 1968 in Wałbrzych, Lower Silesia (Poland). She holds a degree in Cultural Studies from Wrocław (Breslavia) and a PhD in Philosophy from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The author of numerous fiction and non-fiction books, she is widely considered one of the most compelling voices in contemporary European literature. In 2013, she won the prestigious Nike Award for her novel Ciemno, Prawie Noc (Dark, almost night), which was also adapted into a feature film. In 2015, she was awarded the Silver Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture, and in 2024, she received the Österreichischer Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur. Her work has been translated into several languages. In Italy, she published Montagna di sabbia (Voland, 2022) and, most recently, L’ora del lupo (Feltrinelli, 2026), a family epic following four generations of women rebelling against a history written by men, amidst lost loves, extreme acts, failed escapes, and secrets passed down from mother to daughter. She lives in a small woodland town near Warsaw.