About the author

He was born on 25 February 1959 in Benešov, near Prague. He was not allowed to study: his father, the journalist Štěpán from Počepice in the Sedlčansko region, refused to sign his consent to the 1968 occupation of our country. He trained as a bookseller in Luhačovice and finished grammar school in Prague through distance study. He earned his living as a tram driver, an ambulance and emergency driver, lovingly worked as an “uncle” at the children’s home in Sedlec-Prčice, hauled milk by lorry from Austria, and ended his working career as a stoker and bin-carrier at the Vysoký Chlumec brewery.

He devoted himself to journalism and prose alike. He initiated and helped create eighteen almanacs of Czech poetry; the latest anthology of sixty-eight poets, Poslední zhasne (The Last One Out Turns Off the Light), appears in the summer of 2025. He has published twenty-five individual poetry collections — his newest book of verse, Stébla sopečného (Volcanic Blades), was born a year ago. His latest manuscript of poems, Simetra aneb říkejte mi Artemis (Simetra, or Call Me Artemis), is now on its way to the publisher. A few months ago his book of conversations with artificial intelligence, Cílové nástupiště (The Final Platform), came into the world.

In a single decade of photography he has held twenty-five solo exhibitions; his ongoing show Polibky krajiny (Kisses of the Landscape) can still be seen in the Mníšek Chapel at Svatá Hora near Příbram. He has prepared two black-and-white photographic books, Můj malý svět (My Little World) and Cesty domova (Ways Home). He was fortunate to meet, over the course of his life, great Czech photographers — Stanislav Lada from Litoměřice, Jan Reich, who lived a village away, František Dostál from Prague, and his friend Roman Szpuk from the Šumava mountains. Most of all, though, he loved the photographs of Vilém Heckel, which accompanied him throughout his childhood.

He has exhibited his collections of photographs in many places across the Czech Republic: in the pub of his native village of Nechvalice, in the library in Petrovice u Sedlčan, in the KDJS cultural house in Sedlčany, in the pharmacy of the Bohnice hospital and, a few months later, in the Church of St Wenceslas in Bohnice, in the library in Královské Vinohrady, in the Slovak House in Prague, in the Gong hall in Prague 8, in a boiler room in Jilemnice, in the municipal office in Studenec below Sněžka, several times in the Jan Drda Library in Příbram, and a few years ago in pre-Christmas Bratislava at the Quo Vadis club.

He has three grown-up children — daughters Diana and Luciána and son Štěpán. On retiring he returned to his loves: he bought an old French-built sailboat, Lottchen, repaired her, and in the summer of 2025 sailed her along the waters of the Vltava. He lives where the light breaks over the horizon, in the countryside below Cunkov.