Zsófia Balla

Zsófia Balla (born 15 January 1949) is a Romanian-born Hungarian poet and essayist. She is considered to be one of the most prominent female poets in Hungary.

Biography Balla was born in the Romanian city of Cluj to ethnic Hungarian parents. Her father was a writer and her mother a German teacher. She studied music (violin) at the Cluj Academy of Music, graduating in 1972. After divorcing her first husband, she married the poet Csaba Báthori in 1997.

After publishing her first poems in the journal Igaz Szó in 1965, her first collection of poetry A dolgok emlékezete (Memories of Things) was published in Bucharest in 1968. From 1972, she worked in the Hungarian department of the Cluj radio station as music editor until the station was closed in 1985. Thereafter, she worked as a journalist for the national Romanian newspaper Elore and as literary editor for two weekly magazines. In 1990, she became a member of the Hungarian Writers Association and in 1992 she joined the editorial board of the Hungarian literary magazine Jelenkor. Since 1993, she has been living in Budapest, Hungary.

Selected works Balla has published the following collections of poetry: 1968: A dolgok emlékezete, Irodalmi és Művészeti Kiadó, Bucharest 1971: Apokrif ének, Kriterion, Bucharest 1975: Vízláng versek, Kriterion, Bucharest 1980: Második személy, Kriterion, Bucharest 1983: Kolozsvári táncok, Kriterion, Bucharest 1985: Hóka fóka fióka (nursery rhyme), Kriterion, Bucharest 1991: A páncél nyomai, Kriterion, Bucharest, 1991 1993: Egy pohár fű, Jelenkor, Pécs 1995: Ahogyan élsz, Jelenkor, Pécs 1997: Triangulum, avagy száz ördög közt három szentek (poetry for puppets), Seneca, Budapest 2002: A harmadik történet, Jelenkor, Pécs, 2009: A nyár barlangja, Budapest, Kalligram Kiadó