Beata
Stasak was born in Czechoslovakia and settled in Perth, Western
Australia, in 1994 with her husband and children, arriving to meet
the dissident father she had never known. As his daughter, she was
barred from studying journalism and assigned instead to teach Russian
language and history; her studies included a term at Volgograd
University in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl, an experience she
was later forbidden to discuss. She stood in the town square with her
own children on the eve of the Velvet Revolution — the same square
her great-grandmother Julia would stand in not long after, leaning on
her cane, whispering the word “freedom.” Beata has taught in
Western Australia for more than two decades, alongside two decades as
a caretaker on an organic olive farm. Her short fiction, essays, and
travel writing have appeared in Ariel Chart, Wanderlust Journal, The
Greens (WA) Magazine, Defenestrationism.net, and HubPages/LetterPile,
and she was a finalist in the Preservation Foundation's 2022 Travel
Nonfiction Contest.
