User:WC Turck/sandbox

WC Turck W.C. Turck is a Chicago playwright, artist and activist, and the author of four widely acclaimed books. His latest is "The Last Man," a prophetic novel of a world ruled by a single corporation. His first novel, "Broken: One Soldier's Unexpected Journey Home," was recommended by the National Association of Mental Health Institutes. His 2009 Memoir, "Everything for Love" chronicled the genocide in Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo. His third book "Burn Down the Sky" is published exclusively on Amazon Kindle. It was in Sarajevo at the height of the siege where he met and married his wife, writer and Artist Ana Turck.

FOX NEWS, ABC, CBS News, the Chicago Tribune and The Joliet Herald covered their reunion after the war. He helped organized relief into Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Turck has been a guest on WMAQ-TV, WLS in Chicago, WCPT, WBBM radio, National Public Radio, Best of the Left and the Thom Hartmann show. He has spoken frequently on Human Rights, Genocide and Nationalism. In 2011, his play in support of the Occupy Movement, "Occupy My Heart-a revolutionary Christmas Carol" received national media attention and filled theaters to capacity across Chicago. In July 2012 he helped organize "HelpHouseChicagoHomelessPeople," a 501c3 nonprofit working in neglected and crim-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago to assist and support the homeless, and to restore hope in embattled neighborhoods.

Life

Born in LaGrange, Illinois, June 13, 1962 to a working-class Irish Catholic family, Turck’s early years were shaped by the dramatic events sweeping the world. That year, the world stood at the brink as the United States and USSR threatened nuclear war over proposed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Throughout the 1960s, even as a child, it was impossible to escape the revolutionary events raging around the globe. Vietnam, the Moon landings, and witnessing the riots in the days following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. were seminal. It was the death and Life of Rev. King which resonated strongly with Turck and would figure largely in his art and politics later in life.

In 1989, Turck stood before the Chinese Consulate in Chicago, outraged over the brutal and bloody crackdown of pro-Democratic demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen square.There he urged artists and people of conscience to join in solidarity for the Chinese democratic movement. By 1991, he was studying art and sculpture informally under the late Milton Horn, and preparing to continue those studies in Europe. Horn was instrumental in that decision. At the time the break-up of Yugoslavia undertook a terrible and bloody turn, culminating in the siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. Impassioned by stories of artists pursuing their craft amid the death and deprivations of the siege, Turck made the fateful decision to stand in solidarity with Sarajevan artists, as well as become a witness to the Genocide against Bosnian's Muslim population.

Turck travelled several times to the war zone. Under the Communist regime journlists were generally scorned by most in the former Yugoslav republics as tools of the state. As an artist, representing folkish dissidents and challenges to authority, Turck attained unprecedented access on all sides of the conflict. Those experiences were detailed in his memoir, "Everything for Love."

In May 1994, after returning for the second time from the Balkans, he helped found and organize the Rwandan Relief Program. While preparing for a third trip to the war in Bosnia he continued efforts to collect relief aid for the Genocide victims in Africa, an effort which culminated in sending 20 tons of supplies to victims and refugees in Goma, Zaire, then the largest refugee camp on the border with Rwanda. But by that September he was again in the Balkans. This time living and travelling with Bosnian Muslim combat units, and undertaking a dangerous trek across central Bosnia alone to reach the besieged capital. Turck arrived in Sarajevo in October 1994, crossing through the siege lines amid an embattled tunnel connecting Sarajevo to the outside world. It was on this trip that he met and married a Bosnian woman, Ana Tosic, an artist, writer and latin dancer, only to have to leave her behind when forced to escape the city. The couple was reunited before news cameras 9 months later in Chicago.

Turck and his wife continued travelling to the Balkans and Sarajevo. In 1999 he stood on a mountaintop outside Sarajevo while NATO jets circled overhead on bombing runs into neighboring Serbia. On September 11, 2001, his experiences in the Balkans would come full circle and bring him to the frontlines of the war on terror.

Novelist/Playwright

Broken, One soldier's unexpected journey Home was published in 2008 based up he and his wife's issues with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the war. The book tells the story of an Iraqi veteran's return home, changed by war. His second novel, Burn Down the Sky, inspired by true events, follows a journalist whose wife is killed in a terrorist bombing. When the trail leads to a radicalized friend he must decide between revenge or forgiveness.

In September 2011, he joined with Occupy Chicago protesting corporate greed and government corruption. The movement inspired the vision to produce, rehearse and stage a play within the protest. Occupy my Heart: a revolutionary Christmas carol,(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3pTBFNmijU&feature=related) inspired by the Dicken's classic, the one hour play, directed by K. Hannah Friedman, and acted by a cast taken directly from the movement, took Chicago by storm, garnering strong reviews and capturing national headlines. The play opened to standing room only audiences across Chicago, and was broadcast on WCPT am820.

WC Turck followed the play with his third prophetic novel, The Last Man, about a world ruled by a single corporation, which is now being adapted to the stage.

Turck is the author of the popular online blog, 900poundgorilla, on Wordpress (http://900poundgorilla.wordpress.com). While covering the NATO protests in Chicago, he wrote an online novel in real time, weaving fiction among real events amid those protests for "21 Days in May." He currently lives in Chicago with his wife, Ana, and their two cates, Oliver and Smudge.