What is Memoir?
The often incorrect use of the term memoir is a pet peeve of mine; after all, it is my genre. It's what I write primarily, and what I teach. So when the Washington Independent Review of Books asked me to write an essay defining memoir, I was more than happy to oblige. Read my essay.
A Walk through the Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou
Moon gate at the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou, China - If you remember my earlier photo essay about the Blue Waves Pavilion - moon gates like this one are typical for a classical Chinese garden. Walking along a path, you are suddenly presented with a neat hole in a wall, and of course you're going to duck [...]
Leslie Maitland on Writing from a Different Point of View in Memoir
My author Q&A with Leslie Maitland appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books last week. Her memoir Crossing the Borders of Time, about finding her mother's first love whom she had lost in the Holocaust in France, just came out in paperback and thus has been rather successful. One of the questions I asked her dealt with writing a memoir about [...]
On Belonging to a Group
How could you not feel elegant under this chandelier? Ballroom of the Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago, where the concert was held. Lately I've been thinking a lot about the issue of belonging to a group - wanting to belong, bending over backwards to belong, finding that for all your effort the return might be nil, and on the other hand [...]
The Writing on the Wall
"Mom vandalized the wall!" - that was my son's first reaction upon seeing my word of the year written on our living room wall. "Hey, there's a word on the wall!" - "Does Dad know about this?" - those were my kids' other reactions. My husband was, thankfully, bemused, and happy to hear that it can be easily removed, and of course [...]
My Grandmother’s Simple Chocolate Pudding Recipe
Isn't chocolate pudding the perfect little comfort food? Easy and quick to make, and good in any season? Yesterday I made some in preparation for tonight's Shabbat dinner. We don't serve desserts often, opting for fruit instead, but my husband recently mentioned that he felt we should make more of an effort to make Shabbat dinners special. Since last night was a rare [...]