Julia Potocka-Ostaszewska

Even before she had learned to read, Julia was a regular guest in the editorial rooms of Kurier Poranny in Białystok, where she would spend hours on end browsing the archives of the daily newspaper. As a natural consequence of this early-age fascination, Julia produced dozens of self-published zines and papers (always distributed with no returns on record), and miles of cassette tapes with recordings of her original radio shows. Unfortunately, the competition has destroyed all the tapes out of sheer envy. She made her first money working at an Italian pizzeria in Costa Brava. Later she worked as an English language tutor, and translated movies and websites. Her passion for journalism was reignited just before graduating from the University of Warsaw (she has a degree in the Studies of West European Languages and Cultures – yes, that is quite a mouthful). That’s when she became an intern at Forum weekly magazine, and later joined the foreign editorial team of the Polish Press Agency, where she became a fixture for another eight years. At the Polish Press Agency, she honed her journalistic skills and developed an ability to seamlessly manoeuvre between EU news, political transformations in Myanmar, and Gaza clashes, all the while keeping an eye on the Spanish struggles to establish a new government. Julia specializes in discovering new places during her travels near and far, but no matter where she may end up – be it Mount Agung in Bali or Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo – she is always happy to be back in her beloved Podlasie. Her job at “Przekrój” is to run the magazine’s English website.