Three weeks after having awarded prizes in the 29th Fine Arts Competition, Friends of Polish Art (FPA) held a Literary Competitions Awards Presentation at the Orchard Lake Schools Galeria.
On Saturday, October 25, the intimate event brought to the Galeria not only the literary competitions winners, but also their families and friends, all beaming with pride and happy for their achievements.
The ceremony began with Brian Malski, FPA President and one of the competition jurors congratulating all the talented writers. Malski also expressed how pleased FPA was with having received so many more entries this year than last year.
A lot of credit for this success goes to Pamela Saunders, chair of the FPA Literary Competitions Committee, who supervised and promoted the competitions. Ms. Sauders could not attend the award ceremony; therefore, the awards were presented by Alina Klin, FPA First Vice President and one of the competition jurors.
FPA has two literary competitions, one for youth, and one for adults, both – like the Fine Arts Competition – were recently revived after a hiatus of several years.
The FPA Youth Literary Competition is named after Suzanne Marie Margaret Sloat. Suzanne Marie Margaret Sloat was a Livonia Public Schools elementary teacher, art lover and a volunteer at the Detroit Institute of Arts, who died in 2014 at the age of 88. The literary competition honoring her was established thanks to the contribution of her husband, Raymond Okonski, a very generous supporter of a great many projects and organizations in Polonia.
The FPA Adult Literary Competition honors Estelle Wachtel-Torres, MD. Born in 1919 in Chicago, Estelle Phyllis von Wachtel-Torres was a medical doctor, a graduate of the WSU School of Medicine, who with her husband, for many years ran an OB/Gyn medical practice in Hamtramck while raising four daughters. Dr. Wachtel-Torres, famous for her warm spirit and cosmopolitan perspective, was a lifelong participant in Polish American organizations including Friends of Polish Art (Detroit), Polish American Arts Association (Washington, D.C.) and the American Council for Polish Culture. She died in 2012 at the age of 92.
This year the theme of the youth competition was“My adventures with a famous person of Polish descent or Polish legend or mythological creature”. Adult writers, on the other hand, were asked to write historical fiction based on the life and accomplishments of one of the 2025 Patrons of Poland. Each year the Polish Parliament chooses several famous Poles as the year’s “patrons”, as a way of acknowledging and bringing to public attention their contributions to Poland. For 2025 they chose Rev. Prof. Józef Tischner, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Władysław Stanisław Reymont, Wojciech Jerzy Has, Stefan Żeromski, Antoni Słonimski, Olga Boznańska, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Franciszek Duszeńko, the first kings of Poland, and the heroes from Katyń, Kharkiv and Miednoje.
The submissions to the FPA literary competitions were judged on their creativity, treatment of a theme, style, also on how accurately they represented the historical contexts, and on grammatical correctness. The jurors – in alphabetical order – Alina Klin, Brian Malski, Mark Ozog, Jessica Saunders, and Pam Saunders very much enjoyed the creative storytelling and were impressed with the imaginative ways the works explored our rich Polish culture.
During the ceremony, six of the eleven awardees read excerpts of their work.
One of them, Ania Kryczek, a middle school student from Ann Arbor, won an award for her short story “Południca”. Written in Polish, it tells the story of a 13-year-old girl and her brother who went to a forbidden field and encountered the Południca, a demon that preys on those who are out in the field at high noon in the summer. During the reception that followed the ceremony the very talented young author revealed that she has been working on a crime novel and has already written four chapters. Quite an achievement, indeed!
Łukasz Maciąg, the third prize winner in the adult competition is not a stranger to the FPA literary competition. The winner of the last year’s edition is also a competitive runner. While reading an excerpt from his short play in verse Mieszko II, Łukasz amused the audience with some impromptu acting and then had to leave as the following day he was running a marathon in Chicago.
The first prize, and $500 award in the adult competition went to Sasha Gilders, a Notre Dame student, for her cycle of poems The Metronome of Warsaw. The cycle traces the life of the poet, playwright and journalist, Antoni Słonimski, raised Catholic in an assimilated Jewish family from Warsaw, and captures his struggles with questions of identity, exile, censorship, and artistic freedom across a turbulent century. For her reading Sasha chose two poems from the beginning of the cycle, addressing the Polish-Jewish upbringing of the future poet and one from the end, describing life in Poland under Stalinism. You can read Sasha’s amazing poems here: https://polishweekly.com/the-metronome-of-warsaw-the-story-of-antoni-slonimski/
Antoni Spiewak won the first prize of the high school level of the youth competition for his story My Adventure with Skarbnik, the Mine Guardian. While thanking the FPA for the award, Antoni, a junior at the International Academy West, reflected on the power of storytelling and complimented Friends of Polish Art for doing their part in promoting this important human practice and art form.
Encouraged by this year’s success, Friends of Polish Art is planning to continue the literary competitions.
Among the many purposes creative writing serves, there is self-expression, entertainment, the sharing of information but also thinking through issues and problems and – in a profound way – writing offers an opportunity to discover meaning and to understand the world better.
The Polish Weekly congratulates the winners and thanks the literary contests organizers for promoting Polish culture and encouraging writers to spread their literary wings! Below is the list of all the winners. More of the awarded work will be available on the FPA website soon.
The Winners of the 2025 Suzanne Marie Margaret Sloat – Youth Literary Competition:
1. Level 1 – Elementary School
Klara Wible ($100.00) for A Mermaid’s Tail,
2. Level 2 – Middle School
Ania Kryczek ($125.00) for Południca (the story was written in Polish)
3. Level 3 – High School
– First Place ($300.00): Antoni Spiewak for My Adventure with Skarbnik, the Mine Guardian. (For this award, the original award of $150 was matched by the American Council for Polish Culture)
– (tie) Second Place ($125.00): Adam Kryczek, Moje spotkanie z Bazyliszkiem/ My Encounter with the Basilisk (the story was written in Polish)
– (tie) Second Place ($125.00): Isabella Gilewski, Adventures of the Fern Flower
– Three Honorable Mentions ($50.00 each):
Riley Courtney for Under Madame Curie’s Glow
Elizabeth Miller for Nadzieja/ Hope
Ava Mortimore for The Syrenka of Warszawa
The Winners of the 2025 Estelle Wachtel-Torres, MD Literary Competition:
First Prize ($500): Sasha Gilders for The Metronome of Warsaw
Second Prize ($300): Iliana Woloch for Portrait of a Girl
Third Prize ($200): Lukasz C. Maciąg for his short play Mieszko II
The author thanks Pamela Saunders for her contribution to this story.
