Magdalena Kozak

Magdalena Kozak (born 25 June 1971 in Warsaw) is a Polish writer of speculative fiction. She is also a career military officer and emergency physician, and served as a parachute-trained paramedic during Polish deployments to Afghanistan in the early 2010s.

She has a strong interest in the military: she is an experienced parachutist and practices shooting (as an instructor and sports shooting judge). She studied medicine.

Military service A military physician specializing in emergency medicine, she served in the . She participated in Polish missions in Afghanistan (7th and 12th rotations of the Polish Military Contingent in Afghanistan, in 2010 and 2012). Later she also served in Polish military missions in and .

In 2012 she graduated from the General Tadeusz Kościuszko Military University of Land Forces. In August 2012, President Bronisław Komorowski awarded her the .

She is an experienced parachutist, having completed over 300 jumps by 2017.

Her rank progressed from second lieutenant in 2015, to lieutenant in 2017, to captain in 2019. She worked in the emergency department of the . In May 2025 she was promoted to lieutenant colonel at the .

Literary career Kozak's fiction is frequently noted for combining speculative premises with detailed and technically credible depictions of military life, reflecting her professional experience, it has often been classified as military science fiction.

Her literary debut was the short story Nuda, published in the online magazine Fahrenheit, where she served as an editor from 2005 to 2011. The story, a humorous pastiche of fairy tales about a princess guarded by a dragon, marked the beginning of her engagement with genre fiction. The fourth installment, Młody, was published on 24 May 2017, followed by the fifth, Gracz, on 18 June 2025. The first four volumes of the series have been translated into English (published in 2017 and 2018 by New Zealand publisher Cheeky Kea Printworks as, respectively, Nighter, Renegade, Nobody, and Inanite); it is one of the relatively few works of Polish speculative fiction to reach an international readership. Year Award Work Result 2005 Nautilus Award Operacja „Faust” Nominated 2006 Nautilus Award Cynglarze Nominated 2006 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Nocarz Nominated 2006 Nautilus Award Nocarz Nominated 2007 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Renegat Nominated 2007 Nautilus Award Renegat Nominated 2008 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Nikt Nominated 2008 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Sznurki przeznaczenia Nominated 2011 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Strasznie mi się podobasz Nominated 2015 Janusz A. Zajdel Award Łzy diabła Nominated 2016 Jerzy Żuławski Literary Award Łzy diabła Nominated