Eduard Petiška

Petiška has worked in many genres as a poet, novelist, short story writer, novelist, author of books for children and young adults, playwright, theorist of children's literature and translator. Since 2013, his works have also been published in electronic form in an edition of the collected works of Eduard Petiška, some of which are available for free download and are among the most downloaded Czech e-books. His work was awarded a number of prizes, an asteroid was named after him.

Since childhood, he has been attracted to stories and fates. At first he was a listener (his grandmother's stories later gave rise to his well-known book Daisy, an extensive collection of German fairy tales), and later he was a great reader. And already in his childhood he began literary experiments. After 1945 he entered the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where he studied comparative literature under Professor Václav Černý, along with German studies, but he also attended other lectures – e.g. with Professor Jan Mukařovský in aesthetics, Professor Karel Chotek in ethnography, Professor J. B. Čapek. He also attended lectures on medicine and other fields. After the liberation, he immediately became involved in cultural life, at first, during his student years, as a poet. He began to publish in the field of prose, poetry, write for newspapers, translate, was active in the Umělecká beseda, was friends with other artists, collaborated with film and radio.

In addition, he became involved in social life as an active member of the Syndicate of Czech Writers. With Konstantin Biebl, he planned to shoot "film poems", a kind of predecessors of today's music videos, and he also wrote for children's magazines and newspapers.

These activities were suddenly interrupted after February 1948, when he was twenty-four. In 1948 he got married, his wife Alena (née Štědrá) was a teacher, she came from an old family of teachers, she was a great support and collaborator for the rest of his life, creating a harmonious environment in which his work could be created. She wrote memoirs about her life, which are freely available on Wikimedia Commons. Their son, the writer Martin Petiška, was a frequent inspiration to his father and can be found in his work (Martínek's Reader, How Martínek Got Lost). He had a number of important friends in artistic circles, especially with artists who, like him, were on the fringes of social status in the 1950s. For example, the writers Jaroslav Seifert, František Hrubín, Bohumil Hrabal, Emanuel Frynta and many others. Painters included Jiří Kolář, Kamil Lhoták, Zdeněk Miler, Karel Teissig, Vladimír Komárek, Zdeněk Sklenář, Vilém Plocek, who illustrated his books, as well as Cyril Bouda, Helena Zmatlíková and others. In the 1950s, an unofficial club was established in his apartment in Brandýs nad Labem, where his friends met, read their works and could get acquainted with each other's new paths of modern art. As a non-communist, his path to important positions was closed, which made his path to work all the more open. He is buried in the cemetery in Brandýs nad Labem.

In 2016, the city district of Prague 5 awarded him honorary citizenship in memoriam.