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Franceska Michalska was born in 1923 in Kamieniec Podolski, Ukraine. Miraculously, she survived the great famine of the era, and in 1936, when she was twelve, her family, along with thousands of Poles from pre-partition Poland, were exiled to Kazakhstan. During WWII she was sent to one of the Red Army field hospitals before being transferred to work in an orphanage. In 1941, she began medical studies in Almaty. Inching further and further west to other medical universities, first in Kharkiv, then in Chernivtsi, she finally found herself in Poland. In 1949 she graduated from medicine at the University of Wrocaw. Until her death in 2016 Michalska remained a well-known pediatrician and was visited by patients from all over the country. On April 10, 2017, she became the patron of the Care and Treatment Institute for Children and Youth in Baciki roda. Stubborn Life was a finalist for the COGITO Literary Award 2008, and has been published in Polish and French. Sean Gasper Bye's translations of Polish literature have been awarded the EBRD Literature Prize and the Asymptote Close Approximations Prize. He has been a Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University, a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, and Literature and Humanities Curator at the Polish Cultural Institute New York. He lives in Philadelphia and currently serves as the Interim Executive Director at the American Literary Translators Association.
"Praise for Stubborn Life ""Rarely do people write about such great tragedies as calmly as Michalska does--without complaint, without blame. The dispassionate style of the narrative strengthens the impact of the description. This is a story about the will to survive, and about the joy that comes from that survival. Awe-inspiring--I read this incredible recollection in one breath."" --Granice ""A sober hymn to tenacity and courage. This determined woman tells her story in a neutral tone, without pathos, without bitterness, without incriminating or nationalist reproaches. Despite everything, solidarity, dedication, and kindness persist."" --Les Notes ""What a story! Stubborn Life is both a glimpse into all the complexities and cruelties of the Soviet twentieth century, and a sober and powerful account of a life marked as much by the determination to move forward as by 'the memory of all those (...) who stayed there forever.'"" --Passage � l'Est"
