Peter Repka & Ivan Štrpka: The Lonely Runners...

Štrpka: Poet, novelist, lyricist, translator. Born in Hlohovec in 1944, he studied Slovak and Spanish at Comenius University in Bratislava. Repka: Poet, novelist, journalist and playwright. Born in Bratislava in 1944, he studied at the local Slovak Technical University and moved to Germany in 1970. Both Repka and Štrpka are members of the Osamělí běžci [Lonely Runners] literary group, and both debuted in 1969: Štrpka with Krátke detstvo kopijníkov [The Short Childhood of Lancers] and Repka with Sliepka v katedrále [The Hen in the Cathedral]. Over the following years, Štrpka then wrote around twenty-five books, Repka about half of that. In 2017, they introduced themselves – together with Ivan Laučík – to the Czech reader in the Osamělí běžci [Lonely Runners] anthology.