Born in a refugee camp after World War II, John Guzlowski came with his family to the United States as a Displaced Person in 1951.  His parents had been Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany.   Growing up in the immigrant and refugee neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, he met hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead comrades and women who had walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians.  His poetry, fiction, and essays try to remember them and their voices. His poems also remember his parents, who survived their slave labor experiences in Nazi Germany. A number of these poems appear in his books Language of Mules, Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books), and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press).  His forthcoming novel The Germans, the story of two German lovers separated by World War II, will be published by Cervena Barva Press.

His awards include the Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association, the American Council for Polish Culture’s Cultural Achievement Award, and the Illinois Arts Council’s $7500 Award for Poetry. He has also been short-listed for the Bakeless Award and Eric Hoeffer Award, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and four Pushcart Prizes.