My name is Alicja Cieszyńska. I was born in Ostrów Wielkopolski. I currently study Polish Language in Social Communication at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. It is also the city where I live now. Surrender to the Sound is my debut novel, birthed from my reignited passion for storytelling. English is my second language. Apart from writing, I enjoy linguistics, Latin, antiquity, and 19th-century prose. I adore everything vintage. I am a mother to my cat, Anakin.
Thalia Holloway is my artistic pseudonym, my alter ego, or the way I see it, a higher form of my being. Whenever I make art, she takes my place. The first name derives from Greek mythology where Thalia, or Thaleia, is the muse of idyllic poetry and the goddess of comedy. Holloway means ‘a sunken road’.