Petr Hruška: Minerals, sentences, non-rooms
– Czechia
Born in Ostrava in 1964, Petr Hruška studied at the Technical University of Ostrava (mineral processing) and at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava, as well as at Masaryk University in Brno (Czech literature and literary science). He penned seven poetry collections (his first was Obývací nepokoje/Living Non-rooms in 1995; his most recent collection is titled Nikde není řečeno/Nowhere Does it Say and was published in 2018). He received the Czech State Award for Literature in 2013. He pursues literary history (he authored monographs on the poets Karel Šiktanc and Ivan Wernisch) and works at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences; he also teaches at multiple universities in the Czech Republic. He edited the work of Jan Balabán in preparation for publication. In 2015, he published his Jedna věta (One Sentence) diary as part of a wider literary project.