Irena Brezna

Irena Brežná was born in 1950 in Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Switzerland in 1968. She worked as a journalist and writer and was also active as a Slavist, psychologist, and human rights advocate. Her autobiographically influenced novel “Die undankbare Fremde” (2012) received the Swiss Literature Prize. Her war reporting from Chechnya earned her, among other honors, the EMMA Journalist Award and the Theodor Wolff Prize. She also received the Zurich Journalism Prize for a report on Kosovar refugees.