One of my favorite professors during my time at the University of Wisconsin-Superior was Anthony Bukoski. I took his creative writing workshop as an undergraduate and then again a few years later as a graduate student. Was it then that I became a writer almost entirely obsessed with time and place? It’s as good a reason as any other.
Bukoski, a Polish-American writer from Superior’s east end, writes short fiction almost entirely based in and around this northwestern Wisconsin port city. His complex, vivid working class characters could only come from a writer who knows and loves the people of this place.
Another of my favorite writers, the late Paul Gruchow, one distilled the moral question facing any writer as asking yourself what you’ve done to “honor and protect the lives of your people.” Bukoski honors his people very well.
Last Saturday the Star Tribune featured the re-release of Bukoski’s short story collection “Time Between Trains” by the Duluth publisher Holy Cow! Press. This is a wonderful book, and the title story is a pitch-perfect example of Bukoski’s style: Taconite trains, loneliness and love.
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