Category Archives: Uncategorized

When I was fifteen years old, my English teacher assigned an essay on the life of someone we admired. I chose to interview my father about his childhood during World War II. He had been imprisoned for a year in … Continue reading →

(originally posted on Redroom in January 2013) “After leaving your show, I noticed only beauty.” –comment in the guest book for “Layers of Being” (Estratos del Ser)   One of the highest purposes of art-making – perhaps its most essential … Continue reading →

Hitler analogies have always disturbed me. As a daughter of two Holocaust survivors, I take this subject very personally. Usually the comparison is intentionally hyperbolic and over-simplistic, designed to provoke fearful knee-jerk reactions, to manipulate and demonize. But here we … Continue reading →

Because my bio refers to me as “novelist, poet and essayist,” I sometimes imagine you, My Inquisitive Reader, wondering how I dare to claim such vast territory. Or perhaps that’s your not-so-subtle eye-roll suggesting I should stop being such a … Continue reading →

The heartbreaking photo of the drowned Syrian child seems to be radically awakening the world — preventing anyone from being able to ignore the current humanitarian crisis facing nearly one million Syrians. Images can have so much more power than … Continue reading →

  What is the blue of damage? Sand poured into an open ear, ships disappearing over the curve of the earth. Your plane has landed, your train has arrived, you are asleep somewhere on a strange pillow. The heart turns … Continue reading →

I had the privilege of meeting E.L. Doctorow twice — a few years ago in San Francisco and a few decades ago in Toronto when I was an aspiring writer attending my first-ever writing conference. I’ll never forget how, in … Continue reading →

I’m sitting in my study, imagining the moment when you turn the first page and begin. I’m here in my chair and you’re in yours. Maybe you’re on a plane or on a couch or in bed; maybe you’re looking … Continue reading →

Today I want to thank the soldiers who saved my life. Because you saved my father’s life, and therefore made it possible for me to be born. Maybe you fought for freedom and democracy, or because your own father fought … Continue reading →

Sometimes I forget that there is really only one story and that we are all either telling it or listening to it, the story that has loss or near-disaster somewhere in the beginning or middle, maybe it brings us to … Continue reading →