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Creative Arts Prize

This award recognizes contributions in the field of creative arts by individuals or groups who have promoted an awareness of the Polish experience in the Americas.

2023: BOLESŁAW KOCHANOWSKI

Kochanowski is a third-generation Polish American blacksmith and artist with numerous public art works on display. Boleslaw's wrought iron projects include architectural ironwork/functional art, home decor and fine art. He desired to show the Polish influence in America through a design of a sculpture to convey that history. He was asked to design a sculpture for the Polish garden section of the Sister City Park in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  Kochanowski named his design For Your Freedom and Ours. “I decided to incorporate the American bald eagle and the Polish white eagle as they were preeminent iconic symbols of these two nations.  Placed on tall spires, the eagles look forward, together in mutual support, just as the two countries’ histories have intertwined and overlapped even since the pilgrims of Jamestown, and that of the Revolutionary War, where Generals Pulaski and Kosciuszko gave their leadership support to George Washington...” 

Kochanowski designed the public artworks for the roundabout in Stevens Point, Wisconsin,  Pinecones, in recognition of the area’s original large community of Polish immigrants, the sculpture’s design is based on the Polish paper cutting folk art of wycinanki. He has another commissioned work in progress on Pulaski which will be installed in St Louis. 

Boleslaw Kochanowski carries on the historic tradition of craftsmanship and creative vision as an accomplished artist and draftsman who utilizes his talents to showcase Polish themes in the public arena.

2022: KAROLINA WACLAWIAK

Karolina Waclawiak is the author of three critically acclaimed novels: How to Get into the Twin Palms, The Invaders, and Life Events. Her debut novel, How to Get into the Twin Palms, develops the themes of displacement and alienation in this immigration story. Karolina Waclawiak holds a BFA degree in Screenwriting from USC and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, VQR, The Believer, Hazlitt, and other publications. She was formerly the deputy editor at The Believer, and in June 2022, became the outlet’s Editor-In-Chief and previously served as the Executive Editor of Culture and Director of Development for News Documentaries.

2021: DR. MAGDA ROMANSKA

Magda Romanska is an associate professor of theatre arts at Emerson College (Boston) and has held visiting appointments at the Yale School of Drama and Harvard University.  Dr. Romanska is a prolific author with a focus on Polish theatre artists such as Kantor and Grotowski as well as Janusz Głowacki, performance artist Dorota Nieznalska and Sławomir Mrożek.  She has also written about women directors in Poland.  She has translated six plays by playwright Bogusław Schaeffer and two film scripts by Andrzej Wajda into English.  In addition to her scholarly and translation work, Romanska writes plays as well as creative fiction and nonfiction which have been staged throughout the country. She is an active professional dramaturg serving as the resident dramaturg for the Boston Lyric Opera.  She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The TheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theater portal leading a team of over 140 regional managing editors around the world covering theatre in over ninety countries and the coverage of Poland theatre is particularly impressive.  Dr. Romanska has “worked tirelessly to make Polish theatre better understood by the English-speaking public, in addition to working as a creative artist in her own right.”

2020:  Leslie Pietrzyk and PRCUA Gwiazda Dancers

Leslie Pietrzyk is a writer and teacher of creative writing. Two of her novels, Pears on a Willow Tree and Reversing the River, deal with the Polish experience in America and explore what it means to be Polish or Polish American in the United States. She has also published novels Silver Girl and A Year and a Day as well as a collection of related short stories, This Angel on My Chest. Her short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, New England Review, The Sun, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah. She holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from American University. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and teaches in the Masters in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University, as well as the Low-Res MFA at Converse College.

PRCUA Gwiazda Dancers was founded in 1960 and is based in Hamtramck, Michigan. The Gwiazda Dancers strive to promote and preserve Polish folk culture through song and dance in the Metro-Detroit area. In addition to their folk performances (the group gave over 30 performances in 2019), the group seeks to enrich its community through volunteer events throughout the year.  These events include, the Empty Bowls Project with Cass Community Social Services, the Give Thanks Event with the Boll Family YMCA, and various outreach programs to aging and disabled veterans in conjunction with the Polish Legion of American Veterans.  The director, choreographer, officers, dancers, and their families consistently work to promote Polish folk culture, the Polish experience, and the city of Hamtramck in all of their undertakings.

2019 - Not awarded

2018 - Ken Peplowski, Jazz Clarinetist

The 2018 Prize was presented to Ken Peplowski who, in the words of Russell Davies, is “arguably the greatest living jazz clarinetist.” Born to the Polish parents in Cleveland, Ken grew up to the tunes of Polish music. In a 2013 interview, Ken Peplowski said: “When you grow up in Cleveland, Ohio, playing in a Polish polka band, you learn to think fast on your feet.”

2017- Dr. Czeslaw Karkowski

Czeslaw Karkowski  philosopher, journalist, novelist and an academic, has been a prolific writer authoring novels, memoirs, collections of essays, and creative nonfiction. His long and distinguished career as a journalist began in the early 1980s in Berlin where he found himself with other political exiles of the Solidarity era, and was followed up by many years in the editorial offices  of the New York City's Polish language newspaper, Nowy Dziennik. His publications include contemporary interpretations of The Iliad by Homer , a historical novel entitled Drugi w Sztuce, as well as a novel of immigrant experience Kamienna Drabina. This immigrant experience returns in his Dziennik Jednego Roku and Na Emigracji. Czeslaw Karkowski using his own emigrant/immigrant experiences provides a sensitive commentary on immigrant identity and the immigrant connection to the home country.

Maja Trochimczyk, with Creative Art Prize, Denver, Jan. 2017

2016 - Dr. Maja Trochimczyk

The 2016 Creative Arts Prize was bestowed on Dr. Maja Trochimczyk, for her achievements as a poet, especially her two books dedicated to Polish victims of WWII, Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014), and The Rainy Bread (Moonrise Press, 2016). Her books of poetry include Rose Always, 2008; Miriam’s Iris, 2008; Into Light, 2016; and two anthologies, Chopin with Cherries, 2010, and Meditations on Divine Names, 2012. She served as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga and published hundreds of poems in such journals as Dr. Trochimczyk received many honors for her work, including the Polish government’s medal for the promotion of culture, a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, PAHA’s Distinguished Service Award (2014), and PAHA's Swastek Prize (2007).

Dr. Trochimczyk has been giving public readings and publishing her poetry since 2007. Her poems appeared in the Clockwise Cat, California Quarterly, Cosmopolitan Review, Magnapoets, Quill and Parchment, Ekphrasis Journal, Edgar Allan Poet Journal, Epiphany Magazine, Lily Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, Lummox Journal, OccuPoetry, Phantom Seed, Pirene's Fountain, poeticdiversity, The Sage Trail, The Scream Online, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Spectrum and anthologies by Poets on Site, Southern California Haiku Study Group, and others. Her fifth poetry book Slicing the Bread. Children's Survival Manual in 25 Poems was published by Finishing Line Press in December 2014. This critically-acclaimed volume is based on war-time and post-war memories of her parents and grandparents. Trochimczyk's sixth poetry collection, including some poems from Slicing the Bread, entitled The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile and the seventh poetry book of spiritual poetry, Into Light appeared in August 2016.

2014 - Adrian Prawica

Mr. Prawica is the director and executive producer of the film The Fourth Partition: Chicago (2013) that tells a unique and rarely talked about history of Chicago's Polish Community at the dawn of the 20th century. It examines economic and political reasons for the migration of over 4,000,000 Poles to the United States between 1870 and 1920. Starting with the first Polish settlers in the Jamestown colony in 1608, this documentary focuses on Polish immigrant workers in heavily industrialized Chicago neighborhoods, their community, as well as their political activism, which aided Poland in her fight for independence during WWI. The Fourth Partition: Chicago features interviews with some of the most known Polish-American historians in the United States [including PAHA's James Pula, Don Pienkos and Dominic Pacyga]. The film shows rare images of Poles in the Unites States and their communities, which they built while working in some of the heaviest industries such as steel and meatpacking. Most of all, it tells a history of one of the largest ethnic communities in Chicago, that is still ever present today. Trailer of the documentary may be seen at: https://www.amerykafilm.com/thefourthpartition/.

Julian Stanczak, Constant Return I, 1965, 39 x 39

2013 - Julian Stanczak

A Polish-born painter and printmaker is being recognized for his 70 years long devotion to art and education and his unique gift for painting and insight into visual perception. He and his family - he was only 12 years old at the time - were all forcibly removed by the Soviet military to Central Asia following the Nazi-Soviet invasion and conquest of Poland in 1939. He escaped from Siberia, via Persia and Uganda reached England and then United States where he received a BA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and completed his MFA at Yale. He has achieved wide acclaim and success despite the fact that since his incarceration in the USSR he has permanently lost the use of his right arm (he used to be right-handed). Julian Stanczak is recognized as one of the important pioneers in Op-Art. This term first appeared in print in Time magazine in October 1964 in response to his show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson gallery in New York. The year 2013-2014 has been announced The Year of Stanczak Celebrations by the Akron Museum of Art in Cleveland, the Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Kelvin Smith Library of Case Western Reserve University Lectures & Exhibitions. https://www.julianstanczak.net/

Julian Stanczak, Constellation in Red, 2003, 36 panels

2012 - Brigid Pasulka

Author of A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). https://www.amazon.com/Long-Time-Ago-Essentially-True/dp/0547336284 Brigid Pasulka, the descendant of Polish immigrants, lives and works in Chicago. In the early 1990s, Pasulka spent a year in Krakow, Poland, learning the language and exploring Polish history and culture. While in Krakow, she witnessed the economic and social transformations, which Poland went through after the fall of Communism. A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True is Pasulka's first break-through novel, which brings the readers to the early 1990s Krakow, while at the same time recalling a love story as it unfolds in the small village in the Polish mountains in the times of World War II and the Stalinist period. A Long Long Time Ago is a winner of several national awards, including PEN Hemingway and a National Geographic Traveler Book of the Month.

Julian Stanczak, Somber Glow, 1978, 32x32

2011 - John Guzlowski

Professor Emeritus of Literature at Eastern Illinois University, and a noted poet. He has published the well-received works Lightning and Ashes and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared on Garrison Kellior's Writers Almanac and in The Ontario Review, Chattahoochee Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Nimrod, Margie, Exquisite Corpse and other journals here and in Europe. His poems about his Polish parents' experiences in Nazi concentration camps appear in his books Lightning and Ashes and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald. Third Winter was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He blogs about his parents and their lives at https://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com/. His work was also antologized in Chopin with Cherries, Meditations on Divine Names, and The Chopin House. Guzlowski has made major contributions to Polish-American culture by promoting the works of other Polish American poets and writers, https://writingpolishdiaspora.blogspot.com. He serves on the PAHA Board of Directors and edits the Poetry Corner for the semi-annual PAHA Newsletter. In his own words: "I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my parents Jan and Tekla and my sister Donna to the United States as Displaced Persons in 1951. My Polish Catholic parents had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. Growing up in the immigrant and DP neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, I met Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. My poems try to remember them and their voices. These poems have appeared in my chapbook Language of Mules and in both editions of Charles Fishman's anthology of American poets on the Holocaust, Blood to Remember. Since retiring from teaching American Literature in 2005, I've written two new books about my parents. My poems about them appear in my books Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books, 2007) and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press)."

2008 - Anthony Bukoski

Dr. Bukoski recently published North of Port (2008), a critically well-received collection of twelve short stories that highlight the lives and legacies of ordinary Polish immigrants at mid-century. He is the author of four other story collections, including Children of Strangers (SMU, 1993), Polonaise (SMU, 1999), and Time Between Trains (SMU, 2003), which was a Booklist Editors' Choice. His stories have been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio, National Public Radio, and in live performance in the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space in New York City. He teaches at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin in his hometown of Superior, where his Polish emigre grandparents settled early in the last century.

Julian Stanczak, Intercepting, 1983, 60 X 60

2007 - Linda Nemec Foster

Ms. Foster is the author of seven poetry collections including Living in the Fire Nest (finalist for the Poet's Prize), Amber Necklace from Gdansk (finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry), and Listen to the Landscape (short-listed for the 2007 Michigan Notable Book Award). Her poems have appeared in over 250 literary magazines and journals including The Georgia Review, New American Writing, North American Review, Nimrod, and the International Poetry Review. Ms. Foster's work has also been included in various anthologies, translated in Poland, exhibited in museums and galleries, and produced for the stage. She has received awards for her work from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, the National Writer's Voice of New York City, and the Academy of American Poets.

2006 - Ann Hetzel Gunkel

Dr. Gunkel is Professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies at Columbia College, Chicago. A specialist in urban cultural studies, she is widely regarded as the leading scholar of polka in the United States. A previous recipient of the PAHA Swastek Prize, Dr. Gunkel is honored with the Creative Arts Prize in recognition of her body of scholarly work focusing on Polish American culture.

2005 - Marek Czarnecki

Mr. Czarnecki is an iconographer, the director of Seraphic Restorations in Meriden, Connecticut. The son of Polish immigrants, he enjoys a national reputation, and is held in particularly high esteem in New England, where he has painted and restored many icons for local Polish churches. He also has written on the subject of sacramental art in Catholic churches in the United States.

2004 - Keith Mallard

Mr. Mallard's work, The Clarinet Polka (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003) was discussed enthusiastically in several presentations at the January 2004 PAHA Annual Meeting. The buzz continued into the June 2004 Conference, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Polonia in North America in New Britain, CT. The repeated refrain was, "he got it right." The protagonist of the Clarinet Polka, Jimmy Dobrowski, returns from military duty, to a fictional West Virginia steel town in 1969. Avoiding sentimental and patronizing portrayals of working-class ethnicity, Maillard shows Jimmy emerging from an alienated, numb state by connecting to a homegrown, and vital local polka culture. This book reminds us that while working-class baby boomers struggled, as their middle-class cohorts did, with political cynicism and alienation in the 1970s, some found meaning in a different place: celebrating and re- inventing an ethnic heritage they had initially scorned.

2003 - Anthony Bukoski

Time Between Trains (Southern Methodist University
Press). The 13 stories in Time Between Trains represent Dr. Bukoski's fourth collection of short stories set in his hometown of Superior, Wisconsin. The stories have been described by reviewers as "beautifully written" and successfully "portraying the overwhelming smallness of his world." Suzanne Strempek Shea writes these stories are "stark, honest, and poignant time capsule of a Lake Superior Polish enclave" and Leslie Pietrzyk notes that the stories represent a "beautifully rendered community of proud people." Excerpts from Time Between Trains have been read on Wisconsin Public Radio and National Public Radio. In addition, Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association, designated Time Between Trains as one of the best books in 2003. Tony's work introduces non-Polonians to Polonia, and allows Polish Americans the pleasure of reading about their everyday lives in American literature.