 | This biography of a living person includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(February 2008) |
Manuela Gretkowska (6 October 1964) is a Polish writer, screenwriter, feminist and politician. She is the foundress of the Feminist Initiative.
Manuela Gretkowska was born in Łódź and studied philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 1988, she left Poland to live in Paris, where she studied anthropology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In the early 1990s, she returned to her country, where she was deputy editor-in-chief and then literary director at Elle . She wrote columns for Elle, Cosmopolitan , Wprost , Polityka , Machina , and Cogito .
Gretkowska's literary debut was the novel We Are Immigrants Here (My zdies' emigranty) (1991), in which she described the experiences of the young generation leaving Poland. The work of the young artist was favorably reviewed by Czesław Miłosz, whose preface appeared in the first edition. Gretkowska's next three books described the life of a modern artistic-intellectual bohemian living in France: Paris Tarot (1993), Metaphysical Cabaret (1994), and Textbook for people. Skull: The First and Last Volume (1996) connects gnosis, kabbala, the character of Mary Magdalene and the skull motif in global culture. In this period, the writer earned the title of "scandalist" and "postmodernist." Manuela Gretkowski's prose eschewed grandiose language, more similar to the ease and austerity of the essay. In 1996, Gretkowska wrote a screenplay for the Andrzej Żuławski film Szamanka (She-Shaman).
In 1997, Gretkowska moved to Sweden, where she published several collected stories in the book Namiętnik (The Passionate One) (1998), notes from her world travels in Światowidz (World-View) (1998), and her columns, under the collective title Silikon (Silicon) (2000). She also co-wrote the screenplay for the first season of the TV series Miasteczko (Small Town) (2000).
Gretkowska's newest work is more personal, almost intimate prose. Polka (Polish woman) (2001) was the writer's pregnancy journal, while Europejka (European Woman) (2004) presents a humorous view of a changing Poland through the eyes of Gretkowska the intellectual. In 2003 the author, together with her partner Piotr Pietucha wrote Scenes from Extramarital Life. Three years later, Gretkowska wrote a column for the monthly magazine Success that was highly critical of the Kaczyński brothers (twins who at the time held the positions of Poland's President and Prime Minister). The issue hit stands with this text cut out (literally) of every copy.
She lives in Ustanow (near Warsaw) with her daughter Pola and the writer and psychotherapist Piotr Pietucha.
In 2007, Gretkowska transformed the social movement "Poland is a Woman" into a new Political party - the Women's Party (Partia Kobiet), from which she ran a failed campaign in the Polish and European parliaments. In October 2007, after the party's defeat in the parliamentary elections, she resigned the party's leadership but remains an "honorary leader".
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Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, she resided in Kraków until the end of her life. In Poland, Szymborska's books have reached sales rivaling prominent prose authors', though she wrote in a poem, "Some Like Poetry", that "perhaps" two in a thousand people like poetry.
Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Countess Emilia Broel-Plater was a Polish–Lithuanian noblewoman and revolutionary from the lands of the partitioned Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Raised in a patriotic tradition in Līksna near Daugavpils, she fought in the November Uprising of 1830–1831 against the Russian Empire. She raised a small unit, participated in several engagements in present-day Lithuania, and received the rank of captain in the Polish insurgent forces. When the main forces under the General Dezydery Chłapowski decided to cease fighting and cross into Prussia, Plater vowed to continue the fight and wanted to cross into Poland where the uprising was still ongoing. However, she fell ill and died.
Rachel Grace Pollack was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot.
Piotr Fronczewski, is a Polish actor and a cabaret and theatre singer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most popular actors of his generation.
Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. She was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.
Barbara G. Walker is an American author and feminist. She is a knitting expert and the author of over ten encyclopedic knitting references, despite "not taking to it at all" when she first learned in college. Other topics she has written about are religion, New Age, the occult, spirituality, and mythology.
In one scholarly conception, the history of feminism in Poland can be divided into seven periods, beginning with 19th-century first-wave feminism. The first four early periods coincided with the foreign partitions of Poland, which resulted in an eclipse of a sovereign Poland for 123 years.
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, née Kossak, was a Polish poet. She was known as the "Polish Sappho" and "queen of lyrical poetry" during Poland's interwar period. She was also a dramatist.
Szamanka is a 1996 erotic drama film directed by Andrzej Żuławski and adapted from a screenplay by Manuela Gretkowska. The film, which was controversial upon its release in Poland, follows the obsessive relationship between an anthropology professor and a strange young woman only known as the "Italian". The title is the feminine form of the word "shaman" in Polish.
Deanna "D. J." Conway was a non-fiction author of books in the field of magic, Wicca, Druidism, shamanism, metaphysics and the occult, and the author of several fantasy novels. Born in Hood River, Oregon to a family of Irish, North Germanic, and Native North American descent, she studied the occult and Pagan religion for over thirty years. In 1998 she was voted Best Wiccan and New Age author by Silver Chalice, a Neo-Pagan magazine. She was an ordained minister in two New Age churches and holder of a Doctor of Divinity degree. Several of her stories were published in magazines, such as the science fantasy publication Encounters, and she was interviewed in magazines and appeared on such television shows as Journey with Brenda Roberts. She also designed Tarot decks, in collaboration with fellow author Sirona Knight and illustrator Lisa Hunt.
Vicki Noble is an American feminist shamanic healer, author, scholar and wisdom teacher.
Cerridwen Fallingstar, is an American Wiccan priestess, shamanic witch, and author. Since the late 1970s she has written, taught, and lectured about magic, ritual, and metaphysics, and is considered a leading authority on pagan witchcraft.
Maria Ivanovna Arbatova, is a Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, journalist, talkshow host, politician, and one of Russia's most widely known feminists in the 1990s. When growing up, she was already showing strong controversial ideologies, for instance, she refused to join the Young Communist League, for she preferred to be "a hippy". She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University, in the Dramatic Arts division of the Gorky Literary Institute, and underwent training in psychoanalysis. She had to leave state university of Moscow "due to ideological conflicts." When she was 19, she became a mother of twins, which complicated her educational processes. She continued studying at the Maxim Gorky Literature institute. After finishing her studies, Maria published some prose and poetry works, however she returned to writing drama, as she claims it is more natural expression for her than other genres. In the pre-perestroika years, the years before 1985, her literary works were banned by censorship. Before glasnost and perestroika, the political program of restructuring and openness of Michail Gorbatsjov, Arbatova had just one play staged, a play that was commissioned. An example of a play that was censored is the play called "Equitation with two knowns". It was banned by the ministry of culture for 10 years. The play is about a female gynecologist performing abortions. The play was misinterpreted as a statement of good or bad of abortion. However the purpose of the play is to bring up the unfair share of responsibility for birth control and child-raising. Nowadays Arbatova is a member of the Moscow Writer's Union and the Union of Theatrical Workers of Russia. She is the author of fourteen plays staged in Russia and abroad, twenty books, and numerous articles in newspapers and periodicals. She has received multiple accolades for her literary and public achievements.
Eden Gray, was the professional name of Priscilla Pardridge, an American actress, and writer on the esoteric meanings of tarot cards and their use in fortune-telling.
Piotr Cezary Skrzynecki was a Polish choreographer, director and cabaret impresario, known for his involvement with the cabaret Piwnica pod Baranami, of which he was the founder.
Hélène Gordon-Lazareff was a French journalist born in Russia to a wealthy Jewish family who founded Elle magazine in 1945.
Irena Krzywicka née Goldberg was a Polish feminist, writer, translator and activist for women's rights, who promoted sexual education, contraception and planned parenthood.
Maria Dulębianka was a Polish artist and activist, notable for promoting women’s suffrage and higher education.
