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 novelWe Are Immigrants Here , 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, Metaphysical Cabaret, and Textbook for people. Skull: The First and Last Volume 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 . In 1997, Gretkowska moved to Sweden, where she published several collected stories in the book Namiętnik , notes from her world travels in Światowidz , and her columns, under the collective titleSilikon . She also co-wrote the screenplay for the first season of the TV seriesMiasteczko . Gretkowska's newest work is more personal, almost intimate prose. Polka was the writer's pregnancy journal, while Europejka 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 Manueal Gretkowska wrote a column for the monthly magazine Success that was highly critical of the Kaczyński brothers. The issue hit stands with this text cut out of every copy. Today she lives in Ustanow 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, 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".
