01.09.1979–?
Monika Kompaníková
Monika Kompaníková studied graphic art and then painting in Bratislava, but became known as a writer. Her first book of stories came out in 2003 with the author’s own drawings, and her novel “Boat Number Five” (2010) won the Anasoft Litera Prize and was later made into a film. Her texts have been translated into more than ten languages.
Biography
Monika Kompaníková’s first award was a prize in the “Poviedka” short story competition in 2001. She was still studying graphic art at the time.
She was born on 1 September 1979 in Považská Bystrica, Slovakia. From 1998 to 2002 she studied graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, and then painting until 2004. Her studies and first literary attempts ran side by side: stories of hers appeared in the annual “Poviedka” collections in 2001 and 2003, and in 2002 she won first prize in a competition for New Year greetings for the company Gaz de France. In 2003 a collection of stories, “Miesto pre samotu” (“A Place for Solitude”), with illustrations by the author, was published in Bratislava. It won her the Ivan Kraško Prize for the best literary debut, and in the “Book of the Year 2003” ranking it took third place in the “Debut of the Year” category. So a painter and graphic artist became a writer, though she did not give up drawing: according to some accounts, she also works as an illustrator of children’s books. Her second book, the novella “Biele miesta” (“White Places”, 2006), came out from the same publisher (LCA). In 2005 one of her stories was included in the anthology “Sex po slovensky 2” (“Sex, Slovak Style 2”), and in 2006 her texts were printed in a Slovak anthology in Chemnitz, Germany. In 2008 she received the Tatra Banka Foundation Prize for young artists.
Her main book is the novel “Piata loď” (“Boat Number Five”, 2010). In 2011 it won the Anasoft Litera Prize, one of the most prominent literary awards in Slovakia. The film based on the novel was directed by Iveta Grófová; released in English as “Little Harbour”, it won the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017. There are also stage productions and animated works based on the book. I find it curious that the text of an author who came from the visual arts was the one to find a life on screen; I have seen no documents that connect the one with the other.
In 2011 an anthology of contemporary Slovak poetry, “Päť x päť” (“Five by Five”), appeared, including her poems. In 2013 came “Hlbokomorské rozprávky” (“Deep-Sea Tales”, Artforum), for which in 2014 the Literary Fund awarded her a prize in the category of literature for children and young people. In 2016 she published the book “Na sútoku” (“At the Confluence”).
Besides books, Kompaníková has written song lyrics, columns and reportage pieces, and later worked at Denník N, a Slovak newspaper. Her stories and novels have been translated into about fifteen languages, among them German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Arabic. She now works as a freelance author.
Profile notes