The Eric Hoffer Award announced yesterday that Echoes of Tattered Tongues: Memory Unfolded by John Guzlowski (Aquila Polonica, 2016) is a Finalist for the 2017 Montaigne Medal.
The Montaigne Medal is awarded to the most thought-provoking books of the year. These are either books that illuminate, progress, or redirect thought. This is an additional distinction beneath the Eric Hoffer Award umbrella. Winners will be announced in May 2017. More info at: http://www.hofferaward.com/Montaigne-Medal.html.
In Echoes of Tattered Tongues, Guzlowski uses an innovative structure of poetry and prose unfolding backwards in time to tell the story of war refugee immigrants in America. Raw and at the same time compassionate, Echoes of Tattered Tongues is a portrait of Guzlowski's family: his parents taken as slave laborers to German concentration camps during World War II; his sister and he born in Displaced Persons camps; the family struggling to build a new life in an America that did not want them. More info, including the book trailer, at: www.polww2.com/AboutEchoes.
"Deeply moving. A powerful, lasting, and sometimes shocking book. Superb," says Kelly Cherry, Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010-2012), about Echoes of Tattered Tongues.
"Our readers were quite touched by his writing," wrote Jane Kulow, Director, Virginia Center for the Book, in notifying Guzlowski's publisher, Aquila Polonica, that Guzlowski had been chosen as a featured speaker for the 2017 Virginia Festival of the Book (March 22-26, 2017).
More praise for Echoes of Tattered Tongues:
"Gut-wrenching narrative lyric poems."-Publishers Weekly
"Taut...beautifully realized." -World Literature Today
"A formally coherent, challenging, and important book" -Harvard Review
"A searing memoir." -Shelf Awareness
"Devastating, one-of-a-kind collection." -Foreword Reviews
"Powerful...Deserves attention and high regard." -Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois
Guzlowski is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Eastern Illinois University, and currently lives in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his B.A. in English Literature from the University of Illinois, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Purdue University.
Over a writing career that spans more than 40 years, Guzlowski has amassed a significant body of published work in a wide range of genres: poetry, prose, literary criticism, reviews, fiction and nonfiction. His work has appeared in numerous national journals and anthologies, and in four prior books. Winner of the Illinois Arts Council's $7,500 Award for Poetry, Guzlowski has also been short-listed for the Bakeless Award and Eric Hoffer Award, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and four Pushcart Prizes. He has been honored by the Georgia State Commission on the Holocaust for his work.
Guzlowski's work has garnered high praise, including from Nobel Laureate Czes?aw Mi?osz, who called Guzlowski's poetry "exceptional."
Aquila Polonica Publishing, www.AquilaPolonica.com, is an award-winning independent publisher based in Los Angeles, specializing in publishing the Polish WWII experience in English. The company is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). Aquila Polonica's titles are distributed to the trade in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe, Australia and New Zealand by National Book Network, www.nbnbooks.com, and are available from fine bookstores, online retailers, and all major wholesalers.
The Eric Hoffer Award, http://www.hofferaward.com/, honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. Since its inception, the Hoffer has become one of the largest international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses.
