born in 1949 in Białystok, graduated from the Warsaw University faculties of Psychology and Education and Journalism, reporter, journalist and essayist

She made her debut in 1971 in a student publication. Between 1975 and 1981 she worked for a students’ weekly “itd.” and then in a literary and social weekly “Kultura”. When martial law was introduced on December 13, 1981, she was negatively verified and dismissed. From this moment she focused on her literary work. Her first books – Stypa (Funeral Banquet), Poprawiny (Wedding Afterparty), Parszywa sytuacja (Lousy Situation) – were collections of journalistic pieces on contemporary provincial Poland, often shown from the perspective of ordinary people. Siedlecka showed their tragic lives filled with exclusion, poverty and social inequalities in the Polish People's Republic. Her feature story Jaworowe dzieci (Sycamore Children) told about the experiences of children of internees, people arrested or remaining in hiding during the period of martial law, while also portraying everyday life in the 1980s. Her breakthrough moment came with Jaśnie panicz (Young Master), a Witold Gombrowicz biography mostly created with the accounts of people from outside literary circles (family, previous servants, school colleagues) and unknown archival materials. In this way, a polyphonic, subjective portrait of the “living” Gombrowicz was created, as well as a story of the landowners’ world ending in the Polish People's Republic. The book was highly rated by the readers, was republished many times, critics praised Siedlecka’s reporter’s ear, her language sensibility, respect for ordinary people, “passion focused on the fight with time, passing, forgetting” (R. Kapuściński). In her next works the author perfected a peculiar kind of a literary biography, which she herself called an “original patchwork”. She portrayed great Polish writers, saving them from obscurity or uncovering unknown or hidden, often private, mostly tragic fragments of their biographies. It sometimes led to a demystification of biographical legends, in the vein of modern biography writing tradition of reconstructing “living people”. Siedlecka focused mostly on the authors’ lives, not their works. As she confessed herself: “My heroes’ works are only a starting point, I’m interested in biographies that – with all their windings – also constitute pieces of work”. Materials for such a journalistic biography were witnesses’ accounts assembled by the author, as well as – mostly unpublished – documents. Thanks to this the writers appeared as ambiguous personalities, presented from a private perspective and involved in complicated interpersonal, moral, sometimes political relations. This strategy is presented in Mahatma Witkac, a multiple portrait of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and in Wypominki (Prayers for the Dead), a collection of 20^th century Polish writers who lived tragic lives. A famous example of Siedlecka’s writing method was Czarny ptasior (Black Bird), in which the author used accounts of villagers from Dąbrowa Rzecka to reconstruct Jerzy Kosińki’s life during the German occupation. Exposing the confabulations that the author of The Painted Bird created, the reporter also gave voice to ordinary Poles accused of antisemitism, who actually helped the Jews hiding from the Germans. Czarny ptasior caused strong attacks on the author from some of the critics, but Siedlecka’s polemists couldn’t disprove the facts she brought to light. Pan od poezji (Poetry Man), a Nike award nominated journalistic story of Zbigniew Herbert, was widely discussed. In it, Siedlecka set straight the facts coming from the poet himself (e.g. about his connections with the Home Army), exposed “black legends” created about him, reconstructed his childhood and youth in Lviv, seeking the roots of Herbert’s post-war attitude in the latter. By revealing other little-known facts from the poet’s biography, she showed the great author’s ambiguous personality.

Obława. Losy pisarzy represjonowanych (Manhunt. The Lives of Victimized Writers) was published in 2005. It turned out to be a kind of the first tome of a trilogy completed by Kryptonim „Liryka”. Bezpieka wobec literatów (Codename “Poetry”. The Security Service and Writers) and Biografie odtajnione: z archiwów literackich bezpieki (Declassified Biographies: From the Literary Archives of the Security Service; honoured with the Józef Mackiewicz Literary Award in 2006). These books are journalistic anthologies, mostly based on documents created by the Ministry of Public Security of Poland and the Security Service. With them, Siedlecka reconstructed tragic histories, often completely unknown, of authors victimized by the communist political police in in the Polish People's Republic, but she also described the actions of those writers, who became agents of security, who built their careers through reporting on their fellow authors. Thanks to this, a unique panorama of a “non-fictional universe” of the communist era Polish literate was created, a one that uses individual examples to reveal the mechanisms of a communist state creation and functioning. In this way Siedlecka opposed the relativisation and trivialisation of the Polish People's Republic, while reminding that “communism was also an erasure, oblivion”.

The author is also a Ksawery Pruszyński Award (1976) and a Leszek Prorok Award (2000) winner. Between 2000 and 2013 she was a lecturer at the Melchior Wankowicz Warsaw High School of Journalism. She is a member of Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich (the Polish Writers Association) and Stowarzyszenie Wolnego Słowa (the Free Word Association).

– Maciej Urbanowski

BIBLIOGRAPHY

collections of reportages

• Stypa, Warszawa: „Iskry”, 1981.
• Poprawiny, Warszawa: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1984.
• Parszywa sytuacja, Warszawa: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1984.
• Jaworowe dzieci, Poznań: Kantor Wydawniczy SAWW, 1991.

literary biographies:

• Jaśnie panicz. O Witoldzie Gombrowiczu, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987 (wydania kolejne, poszerzone: 1992, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2011).
• Mahatma Witkac, Warszawa: Słowo, 1992 (wydania poszerzone: 1998, 2005, 2014).
• Czarny ptasior, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Marabut; Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Cis, 1993 (wydanie kolejne: 2011).
• Wypominki: Warszawa: ABC, 1996 (wydanie kolejne: 2001).
• Wypominków ciąg dalszy. Warszawa: „Iskry”, 1999.
• Pan od poezji: o Zbigniewie Herbercie, Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 2002.
• Wypominki o pisarzach polskich, Warszawa: Świat Książki, 2004.
• Obława. Losy pisarzy represjonowanych, Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 2005.
• Kryptonim „Liryka”. Bezpieka wobec literatów, Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 2008.
• Biografie odtajnione: z archiwów literackich bezpieki, Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2015.