Ewa Lipska was born in Kraków in the Polish People's Republic in 1945. She studied painting and art history at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, and has published nineteen volumes of poetry since 1967. Much of her work emerges out of the events of World War II, and interrogates social and political issues with a skeptical surrealism. Her most recent volumes—1999, Sklepy Zoologiczne (Pet Shops), Ja (I), Gdzie Indziej (Somewhere Else), and Drzazga (Splinter, 2006)—are influenced in particular by her friendships with Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal.