His literary output includes four volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, two novels, a book of essays, and the final work, Fabula rasa, which is difficult to classify.

In addition to writing, Stachura translated literature from Spanish and French, most notably works of Jorge Luis Borges, Gaston Miron and Michel Deguy.

His brother Ryszard, eight years his senior, says that young Edward was courteous, caring, and likeable, but unusually stubborn: in school he had a habit of correcting his teachers if their ideas were at odds with those he got from other sources.

Originally Stachura planned a career in electrical engineering, and he also liked biology and geography, but his interests gradually shifted toward the visual arts and literature.

He interrupted his studies at CUL twice, and after travelling around the country in 1959 and 1960 he finally transferred to the University of Warsaw, his move to the capital motivated primarily by a desire to facilitate the publication of his work.

[9] Two books of poetry followed in 1968: Przystępuję do ciebie (I Come Close to You) and Po ogrodzie niech hula szarańcza (Let the Locust Hold Sway in the Garden); the latter received the prestigious Stanisław Piętak Prize.

The second novel, Siekierezada albo zima leśnych ludzi (Axing, or the Winter of the Forest Folk), followed in 1971, and it earned the author Stanisław Piętak Prize for the second time.

Like the first novel, the book began with notes in the journal starting in 1967, and it was written partly in Mexico where Stachura studied in 1969 and 1970 on a twelve-month scholarship funded by the Mexican government.

In January 1972, Stachura lost his "adopted father," Rafał Urban: a writer and a storyteller; a fascinating, colorful character, twice his age, who died of cancer.

[11] Right after his father's funeral, Stachura found himself in a hospital, a victim of an abnormally strong allergic reaction; while there, he wrote letters to all three siblings informing them of his intent to break off all contact with them[12]—the symptom of a tendency that would soon become more pronounced.

In the next few years Stachura showed a gradual deepening of distancing himself from events and people, and of his perception of aversion and hostility in the actions of friends and relatives.

"[15] The book led to extremely polarized critical reactions: they ranged from calling it a manifestation of the author's mental breakdown (Ziemowit Fedecki) to praising it as one of the greatest works in the world literature (Andrzej Falkiewicz).

He taught himself to write with his left hand and described his experiences before, during, and after the accident in a deeply moving journal, later published under the title "Pogodzić się ze światem" ("To Come to Terms with the World").