Hodossy Gyula

Poet, literary critic and theorist, literary and cultural organiser. Since 1996 he has been director of the Katedra Foundation and of Katedra, a journal for Hungarian teachers and parents in Slovakia, which is still published today. He is a founding member of the Forum Minority Research Institute. He is the founder and chairman of the Vámbéry Civic Association and the Vámbéry Literary Café. He has edited some twenty anthologies and is the author of collections of poetry and one volume of prose. Gyula Hodossy is the founder of several Hungarian institutions in Slovakia; his name is associated with the Vámbéry conferences, which the Vámbéry Civic Association has been organising in the town of Dunajská Streda for a number of years.

In the 1980s he championed young emerging writers who were under attack, organised the Iródia movement and edited booklets of their writings. His work carries a strong voice of social criticism with an ethical and moral dimension. He cooperated with the Hungarian Committee for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia and was a founder of the Independent Hungarian Initiative, which helped bring about the change of the political system. Since 2003 he has been president of the Society of Hungarian Writers in Slovakia and director of the book and newspaper publisher Lilium Aurum. For fifteen years he has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of Opus, the literary journal published by the Society of Hungarian Writers in Slovakia, and editor-in-chief of the literary supplement Előretolt Helyőrség.

He has received the For an Open Europe Award, the Partium Award, the Hungarian Gold Cross of Merit, the Civic Order of Honour Award, the Attila József Award, the Slovak Civic Honour Award and the Mayor of Dunajská Streda Award, and he is an honorary citizen of Dunajská Streda.