Skip to main content

Distributed for Calon

There She Goes, My Beautiful World

A Memoir

Now in paperback: A memoir that follows a woman’s journey to build a new life in Wales after surviving trauma in Poland.

What does “home” mean? Is it where you come from, or is it something that you have to create for yourself, building brick by brick on the ruins and treasures of everything that has gone before?

In this compelling memoir, Gosia Buzzanca tells the story of a young woman who leaves Poland at the age of nineteen in search of a bigger life, hoping to leave the traumas of her teenage years behind her. After studying in England, she finds a rich new tapestry of experience awaiting her in Wales, with intertwined threads of love and literature, hope and despair. Motherhood brings new joys, but the pain of the past must be faced before this new life by the seaside can truly feel like home.

With the fearless honesty of a poet, Buzzanca offers her account of an extraordinary ordinary life, where every flavor is tasted and every moment lived to its fullest. This story of a lifelong quest for home will speak to anyone who has ever felt lost or incomplete and who yearns to find a place where they belong.


176 pages | 5.31 x 8.5 | © 2026

Biography and Letters


View all books from University of Wales Press

Reviews

“Gosia Buzzanca’s memoir is a deceptively simple account of becoming a writer. You can taste and smell her story of being brought up in Poland and moving to the UK. Everyday details flash into the occasional brilliant metaphor in this warm and vibrant story of moving into adult family life and art. Delightful.”

Gwyneth Lewis

There She Goes, My Beautiful World takes you into two vibrantly textured worlds, Poznan, Poland and Barry, Wales, to relate the story of a girl who’s lived to tell it with such vitality it immediately feels like the long breathless account of a close friend, hair-raising at times, always warm and strangely enchanting.”

Rachel Trezise

"Gosia Buzzanca’s stunning debut illuminates the particular ache and wonder of being caught between languages, countries and versions of yourself. Part coming-of-age story, part meditation on displacement, motherhood, memory and belonging, There She Goes, My Beautiful World announces a brilliant new voice in memoir.

A book about leaving and staying, losing and finding, written with the kind of fearless tenderness that transforms the personal into the universal."

Ariel Gore

“Vulnerable, melancholic but unafraid, There She Goes, My Beautiful World navigates a life still evolving in glimpses of sharp prose. Compelling in its intimacy, the story is shared, rather than told, and as the narrator grows, we do too. We encounter Malgorzata, meet Gosia, and then get to know G.”

Anthony Shapland

“Structured as richly poetic vignettes, this memoir engages effortlessly as it journeys through G’s girlhood challenges, providing us with deeply immersive snapshots of a curious mind that finds joy in the moment but doesn’t flinch away from darker memories. There She Goes, My Beautiful World is a rare treat!”

Hanan Issa

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press