The author (born 1985) graduated from the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague (studio of J. Sopko) and is a co-author of the artistic part of the graphic novel CHYBA (loosely based on the novel by M. Šindelka). His poems have been published in Souvislosti, Listy, and Přítomnost, among others. He is also represented in the anthology The Best Czech Poems 2015. Lipavský, as one might expect from a creator with a dual focus, is gifted with a sense for grand scenery as well as small, fleeting still lifes: "You saw the sequoia, I the whale / and nothing happened / the usual feeling of empty target places / bullets embedded in the bark of pines / on the side from the sea." The niche is a space that delineates emptiness, yet it is an emptiness filled with hope and sharing. The niche is the debut of a powerful gaze.
