Olya Ianovskaia is a Belarusian-Canadian literary translator and the founder and publisher of Grunwald Publishing.
Born in Minsk, where she attended a Belarusian-language gymnasium, Olya moved to Canada at fifteen. She found the Belarusian community in Toronto, and her grandfather’s letters, always written in Belarusian, kept her close to the language. It was in those first immigrant years that she began reading Belarusian literature seriously, and she has never stopped.
She holds a graduate degree in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Her translations combine scholarly rigour with literary sensitivity: grounded in the source culture and attentive to the English reader. She translates from Belarusian, Polish and Russian into English.
Translations
- Nobleman Zavalnia, or Belarus in Fantastical Tales by Jan Barszczewski (1846): first complete English translation
- Two Souls by Maksim Haretski (1919): first English translation
- The Belarusian Cookbook by Aliaksandr Biely: co-translated and adapted for the English-speaking kitchen
- As Much Freedom as You Can Carry: Confessions of a Belarusian Metalhead by Uladzislaŭ Navažylaŭ (Lesley Knife): forthcoming
Why Grunwald
When Olya went looking for English translations of the Belarusian classics she had read in school, so she could share them with her Canadian-born daughter, she found almost nothing. What did exist was out of print, prohibitively expensive, or translated from Russian rather than the original.
“Belarusian books in English translation should be easy to find and buy. They belong wherever readers already are: in bookstores, on library shelves, and a click away on every major platform.”
She founded Grunwald Publishing in 2023 on the conviction that Belarusian literature belongs on the world stage. The press translates classics into English and also gives contemporary Belarusian writers a place to publish in their own language. She oversees every stage, from translation and editing to design and distribution.
Read interviews with Olya → · Meet our authors →
Fellow translators
Grunwald is small and self-funded, so we can’t commission paid translations, but Olya is always happy to hear from other Belarusian–English translators, to swap notes, share work in progress, or talk about books that deserve an English edition. Get in touch.