Joanna Olczak-Ronikier was born in 1934 and is a highly acclaimed writer and journalist. In the Garden of Memory (W ogrodzie pamieci) won the Nike Annual Literary Prize in Poland in 2002 and was also shortlisted for the prestigious Wingate Literary Prize 2005, awarded by the Jewish Quarterly. She has also written plays for radio and theatre, as well as the screenplay for a major television serial about the history of a 19th-century Kraków family. In 1956, she cofounded the Piwnica pod Baranami Cabaret in Kraków, a literary and political gathering place that is popular to this day. Her grandparents, the Mortkowicz family, ran one of the best publishing houses and literary bookshops in Poland before World War Two.