Tadeusz Korzeniewski has lived in Poland and
then in America half a life in each.
He was born in the family of a WWII Home Army
fighter. He studied electronics and philosophy, then joined the pre-Solidarity
anti-Communist movement as an underground printer and writer. His book W Polsce [In Poland] was published in the
underground in 1981, and in England by an émigré publishing house. In
1984 it was awarded the Koscielski Prize. In 2010 it was republished in post-Communist Poland.
In 1981 he moved from Poland to France and then
on to New York (1983), Montana (1992), and Seattle (1998), where he lives
today. In New York he worked as a busboy at the Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel.
In Montana he worked on the Flathead Reservation in a burger joint. His first job in Seattle was as an office furniture installer on the Microsoft
campus in Redmond. Of the many gigs he has done for a living in America, he most
values his job as a security guard, guarding the Lansdowne portrait on its cross-country tour.
He began writing in English around 1990.
Generous America responded right off with a string of fellowships: from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the
MacDowell Colony, and more. At first, he wrote about his country of origin. The
trouble started when he turned to the American stuff and hit the third-rail
issues, his game. He was still fairly naive about the country, he thought that
now since he was in America he could publicize the truth as he pleased. The contemporary American publishing world was just itching for it to be
dropped on their desks, he imagined. Boy he was in for a surprise. To get ready to
flatten that check, and like many before him, he hit the roads West.
His latest is
Seattle. He is at work on
European.
