Lusia Slomkowska

Lusia Slomkowska 2/1/1954 - 7/25/2014 Lusia was a poet, fiction writer, essayist and translator. She traveled, lived and taught in Eastern Europe as well as the US. She worked as an actuary, bread packer, dental assistant, produce farmer and ran Inn Complete: a Women's Bed and Breakfast in Barrio Viejo in Tucson. Her MFA in writing was from Vermont College. She also studied at the Women's Writers Center, NY, and was a resident at St Hilda's College, Oxford University. Teaching included: Phoenix College; the Experiment in International Living, Battelboro, VT; Freehand: a Community of Women Writers and Photographers in Provincetown, MA and the Yale Cabaret Theater in New Haven, CT. Her work appeared in The Agni Review, Amelia, Kalliope, New Letters, Parnassus, the Quarterly and Quarterly West. Lusia has been anthologized in Looking for Home, Women Writing about Exile, Milkweed Editions, 1990; and The Poetry of Sex, Banned Books, 1992. She complied, edited and translated the anthology, Swallowing Paradise: Thirty 20th Century Polish Women Poets. Grants and fellowships include The Barbara Deming Money for Women Memorial Foundation, the Polish National Library Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Her writing has been awarded the Poetry Atlanta Award, Writers at Work Poetry Fellowship, Bennington Writers Workshop poetry prize and the Lucille Sandberg Haiku Award. She was a facilitator for Glob-all, Young Polish Women Photographers at WomanKraft Art Center, Tucson, 2004. Luisa is survived by brother, Leon Slomkowski, Jr. (Jan) Hamden, CT; sister, Bernice Szafarek (Stefan); nieces and nephews, Heidi Davies (Tommy) Hamden, CT, Kate Dietz (Tom) Wallingford, CT, Tyler Slomkowski, Hamden, CT, Stephanie Szafarek, Oakland, CA, Thomas Szafarek, Lebanon, CT, Adam Szafarek, Lebanon, CT and a legion of loving friends. A Celebration of her Life is planned at the University of Arizona Poetry Center on Sunday, September 28, 2014 at 1:00 p.m. RSVP lusiarsvp@gmail.com