Barbara Gawryluk

Barbara Gawryluk was born in Kraków on 19 May 1957. She studied Swedish philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, which gave her the language she later used as a translator and as a reporter on Swedish culture. Little has been published about her childhood and family background.

Gawryluk joined Radio Kraków in 1992. She worked in the news department and then in the culture department, and for many years was responsible for literary programming, including "Z radiowej biblioteki". On Sunday mornings she presented "Alfabet", her own programme about books for children and young people, in which she interviewed many Polish and foreign authors. Her programme "Książka na szóstkę" won the Polish section of IBBY's Book of the Year award for promoting reading in 2010. She also reported on events in Sweden, not only cultural ones, for national and local media.

She published more than twenty books for children. They included Kaktus dobry pies (2004) and its sequels, Przedszkolaki z ulicy Morelowej (2005), Dżok. Legenda o psiej wierności (2007), the Gwizdek picture books, Zuzanka z pistacjowego domu (2009), Moje Bullerbyn (2010), a children's guide to the Wieliczka Salt Mine (2011), Mali bohaterowie (2011), Dziewczynka z fotografii (2012), Baltic. Pies, który płynął na krze (2012), Teraz tu jest nasz dom (2016), a series about working dogs such as Czart. Pies lawinowy (2018), Falco. Pies lotniskowy (2018) and Badyl. Pies policyjny (2020), and Pies na medal (2024). Animals, friendship, responsibility and care for others ran through her work. She also wrote Wanda Chotomska. Nie mam nic do ukrycia, a biography of the children's poet, and, with Paweł Skawiński, guidebooks for families to the Tatras (2021) and to Podhale, Orawa, Spisz and the Pieniny (2023).

As a translator from Swedish she rendered close to fifty books into Polish, including all the volumes of Martin Widmark and Helena Willis's Lasse and Maja detective series, several books by Moni Nilsson, among them the Tsatsiki stories, and picture books by Pernilla Stalfelt. She was a member of the Unia Literacka writers' association.

Gawryluk was the mother of two children, a daughter, Agata, and a son, Jacek, who she said were the first reviewers of her books. In an interview recorded at her home in July 2026, she said that visits from her grandchildren were what still gave her happiness during her illness.

Barbara Gawryluk died on the morning of 16 October 2026, aged 69. Her children, Agata and Jacek, announced her death on social media, writing that she had died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones, after a long and serious illness. The place of death was not reported.

She had stepped away from Radio Kraków in the autumn of 2025 without explaining why. In an interview with her colleague Sylwia Paszkowska, recorded on 2 July 2026 and published by Radio Kraków on 3 August 2026, she disclosed that she had multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare and incurable neurodegenerative disease. She said it had first affected her throat and speech, that she had been treated for Parkinson's disease for two years before the correct diagnosis in December 2025, and that she had decided to speak because it was her last chance to tell people about the illness.

Radio Kraków, the Swedish Embassy in Warsaw, RMF FM, TVN24, Onet and Rzeczpospolita all marked her death. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Radio Kraków described "Alfabet" as a cult programme with fans among whole families, and colleagues there said that many of them had learned the craft of journalism from her. Her book about Dżok helped keep alive the story of the faithful Kraków dog commemorated by a monument in the city, and it was placed on the "Cała Polska czyta dzieciom" anniversary list of ten important children's books. Through her translations, Polish children came to know the Lasse and Maja mysteries and other modern Swedish writing for young readers, work for which Sweden awarded her the Order of the Polar Star. Her other honours included the Kornel Makuszyński Literary Prize, the IBBY Book of the Year award for promoting reading, the 112 Award and, in 2025, the Dumni z Powstańców decoration.