Polish-born American writer Brigid Pasulka has won the annual Ernest Hemingway Foundation award for a literary debut with his novel  A long, long time ago and essentially true. 

The award presentation ceremony will ne held in Boston on 28 March.

The book, published in English in the summer of 2009, is set in the Tatra foothills in Poland on the eve of the outbreak of World War Two. It tells the story of a young man nicknamed the Pigeon who falls in love with a girl fabled for her angelic looks. To court her he offers up his ‘golden hands’ to transform her family's modest hut into a beautiful home, thereby building his way into her heart.  The outbreak of war cuts short their courtship, delays their marriage and wreaks havoc in all their lives. After the war, they leave the village behind for the city of Krakow and the promise of a new life. Nearly fifty years later, their granddaughter repeats their postwar journey, seeking a new life in the city of her grandmother's stories.

Brigid Pasulka is the descendant of Polish immigrants. Having visited Krakow in 1994,  with only a vague idea of Polish culture, she quickly fell in love with the place, studied Polish and decided to stay there for one year. She has returned there many times since. She is a graduate of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently teaches at Whitney Young Magnet High School in the Chicago Public Schools. (mk)