Anna Kańtoch's "Stagioni nere": Polish Fantasy Writer Celebrated in Italian Translation

Polish author Anna Kańtoch, born in Katowice and a graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Oriental Studies, has won the Janusz A. Zajdel Award five times for her fantastic stories. The article, published by Alessandro Mezzena Lona and Anita Romanello on 29 September 2026, opens with a 1971 statement by Stanley Kubrick, who said "a story is something you cannot control" while preparing to film A Clockwork Orange, based on Anthony Burgess's novel. Kubrick's remark is presented as an assertion of the libertarian urgency of artistic creation, which should never accept boundaries of genre, structure, inspiration or execution. Kańtoch is described as a writer who has made absolute freedom of invention her mantra. The piece notes that she has gained recognition in Italy, though the source text is truncated at that point. The article appears on the Italian cultural website Doppiozero.