Born in Krakow, Poland, Dorota Slapa studied a postgraduate degree in Iranian Studies at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, faculty of Asian & Middle eastern Studies and now is a PhD student at Tehran University. She focused her bachelor thesis on Goli Taraghi’s works and her Master’s the selected works of Mahmoud Dowlatabadi.
In 2011, at the invitation of the Swedish Association of Persian Language Teachers she went to Stockholm where she had the honor to share her experience in teaching Persian language with the audience. In 2014, in a seminar organized by Teachers’ Association in Stockholm, she delivered a speech about the situation of Iranian Studies at universities in East European countries.
In 2010, she began her translation work and in 2017 she translated her first book into Polish that is Goli Taraghi’s compilation of short stories. The story “Madam Wolf” was then printed in the first issue of the bulletin of the Association for Iranian Studies at Jagiellonian University. In 2014, she translated an essay by Shahrokh Meskoob based on the book Iranian identity and Persian language that was published in the Compilation of Articles, Iran’s Paths toward Modernity (Jagiellonian University publication).
In 2015, as a member of the project, How to Make a Voice Audible? Continuity and Change in Kurdish Culture and of Social Reality in Postcolonial Perspectives, she was appointed as the editor-in-chief of Kurdish Culture Institute Quarterly, Frittilaria Kurdica, volume 10; the outcome of this collaboration was the translation of a number of short stories and poems by writers of Kurdish descent (including Ali Ashraf Darvishian, Faryad Shiri, Mansour Yaghouti, Peyman Ismaili etc.). The PDF version of this magazine (in Polish) is available at the following link:
http://www.kurdishstudies.pl/?en_fritillaria-kurdica.bulletin-of-kurdish-studies-no.-10,110
In the summer of 2017, she acted as literary curator of Poland’s handmade print exhibition held in the museum of Esfana’s Contemporary Art. Within the framework of this project she translated more than thirty pieces of literary works by contemporary Polish poets and writers into Persian language – including Olga Tokarczuk, Halina Poświatowska, Anna Świrszczyńska, Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski, Sławomir Mrożek, Tadeusz Różewicz etc.
Between the years 2014 and 2016 she developed cooperation with a number of virtual literary – cultural publications in an attempt to acquaint Polish readers with Iran’s rich culture and literature, and translated several short stories by contemporary Persian authors. “Pink Cloud” by Ali Reza Iranmehr, “Broken Future” and “Nine and Twenty Minutes” by Baroj Akreyi, “The Guitar” and “Ali Asghar” by Zoha Kazemi, “Mother Land” and “The Eloquent Woman” by Belgheis Soleimani, “ Last Gravestone” by Atoosa Afshin-Navid etc. are the fruits of this collaboration.
Apart from doing translation work she takes great interest in literary analysis and criticism. Over the recent years she has had several articles published in Iranian and Polish journals.
