Poet... Educator... Scholar

Anna Frajlich (a.k.a Anna Frajlich-Zajac) has lived in New York since 1970, after emigrating from Poland with her husband and son in 1969 with the Jewish "exodus." She received her MA from Warsaw University in the Polish literature, and defended her Ph.D. dissertation in the Slavic Department of the New York University in 1990. Her poetry, reviews, articles and essays have been published in various journals in Poland, the United States, and Europe. Frajlich is a Sr. Lecturer at the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University in New York City, where she teaches Polish language and literature. She is the recipient of the 1981 Koscielski Foundation of Switzerland literary prize and in 2003 a Literary Prize from W. & N. Turzanski Foundation (Toronto, Canada). In the citation the Prize committee praised Dr. Frajlich work as one “of the most interesting phenomena in the contemporary Polish poetry,” and one which “reveals deep truth about the existence of an individual entangled in the tragic fate of contemporary civilization.” She is a member of Polish Writers Association, Polish PEN, and the Board of Directors of the PEN Club Center for Writers in Exile in New York, also several scholarly associations like Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, AAASS and AATSEEL. She is an author of 12 books of poetry, two of them bilingual Polish–English and Polish - French.The newest edition of her bilingual selection received very positive reviews.

In 2002 Anna Frajlich received The Knight Cross of the Order of Merit awarded by the President of the Polish Republic and in 2008 she received the honorary title of the Ambassador of Szczecin, Poland.