Cirrus@Austlit

Anna Wiciak-Suchnicka was born in Homel (at that time situated in Poland, now in Belarus and known as Гомель [Gomel']). With some knowledge of French, Latin, Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, she studied Pharmacy and three years of Medicine. She followed her husband, an army doctor, to his posting in Brody near Lwów. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II he was taken prisoner-of-war, and died in Auschwitz.

In 1940 Wiciak-Suchnicka was deported to Siberia with her parents and small children (her first novels and personal documents were seized by guards at the time). They fled to Uzbekistan, and from there were taken with other Polish families to Tanganyika, where she worked as a high school teacher. After migration to Australia in 1949 she worked in the Mining and Agricultural Laboratory in Perth, Western Australia. Wiciak-Suchnicka began writing during her student years. Her work was published in papers and magazines in Poland before 1938 and in the Polish press in the United States in the 1940s. Her work has been read on ethnic radio in Western Australia from 1984 and she read at Polish House, Perth, between 1970 and 1990 and in 1986 at Polish House, Sydney.