Articles & Essays

In recent years, my writing has been published in Bella Grace, a beautiful print magazine available at Barnes & Noble bookstores or online. My work has also appeared in online publications such as Kveller and Tablet Magazine (the hyperlinks here will take you to my requisite author pages).

Below are a few highlights as well as links to other published work.

Bliss on the Balcony
Bella Grace Magazine, Winter 2021
Last November I flirted with the idea of pursuing a career as a speaker. {link to article}

How to Handle Writing About Blemishes in Family History
Family Tree Magazine, September/October, 2020
When telling family stories, should you include your ancestor’s blemishes (shameful actions or traits) that you’ve uncovered in research? One writer weighs in. {link to article}

A Friend in Prison
Tablet Magazine, April 1, 2020
“So we have friends in prison now?” my daughter, home from college, said as she studied the address on the powder-blue envelope on top of our outgoing mail pile. {link to article}

A Day on a Bench in Paris
Bella Grace, Issue 19 (Spring 2019)
One of the best days of my life was spent in Paris. Not sightseeing, not hanging out in cafés, not visiting museums but rather sitting, all alone, on a bench in the Parc Montsouris.

Why Jews Need This Silly Purim Tradition
Kveller, March 13, 2019
Purim is coming up — this year it begins on the evening of March 20 — and I’ve been busy planning what to put in my mishloach manot, the small gifts of food Jews exchange on Purim. I wasn’t always into this custom, but let’s just say I’ve really come around. {link to article}

I Converted to Judaism to Post-World War II Germany
Jewess, May 15, 2018
Why would a goyishe girl, having grown up in Germany in the 1970s and ‘80s, sign up to become a Jew? The short answer is that I fell in love with a Jew, and then with Judaism. But it’s more complicated than that; ours was an impossible love at the time. {link to article}

The Year I Gave Up Submitting to Literary Magazines
Women Writers, Women’s Books, February 15, 2017 (referenced in interview with New Pages, January 30, 2019)
At the end of every calendar year, I review my writing life to assess what I’ve accomplished and to see where my creative path is leading me. What’s working and what isn’t? What patterns are there, and what are they telling me? {link to article}

Hot Chocolate Party in the Cold
Bella Grace, Winter 2017 (reprinted in The Cozy Issue, Fall 2018)
When I walk through our woods in northwestern Indiana, especially the barren woods at the end of winter, I see my eight-year-old self again, helping my grandfather clear out tree trunks on my grandparents’ property in Michigan. {link to article}

The Tractor
Thread, May 31, 2016
When I walk through our woods in northwestern Indiana, especially the barren woods at the end of winter, I see my eight-year-old self again, helping my grandfather clear out tree trunks on my grandparents’ property in Michigan. {link to essay}

Capture Magic That Hangs by a Gossamer Thread
Bella Grace, Winter 2015
What could be more mundane, more ordinary than acres of woods and meadow in flat northwestern Indiana?

On Not Reading a Book
Washington Independent Review of Books, February 19, 2015
I didn’t read the book for the December meeting of the Memoir Workshop I teach at StoryStudio Chicago. If the instructor doesn’t read the assigned book, that’s pretty bad, right? {link to essay}

Fatal West Bank Stabbing Hits Close to Home
Tablet Magazine, November 13, 2014
In Chicago, news of the murder of at 25-year-old Israeli woman reverberates. {link to essay}

An American Mother Visits Israel on a Mission
Tablet Magazine, July 10, 2014
Sirens wail at 7:19 p.m. I grab my keys and phone, and text my husband in Chicago: “Sirens over Tel Aviv.” {link to essay}

Can a Jew Love Christmas Music?
Tablet Magazine, December 24, 2013
As soon as Thanksgiving dinner is over, it seems, the onslaught of Christmas music begins, assaulting unsuspecting ears across America—at the grocery store, the pharmacy, and even the gas pump. {link to essay}

Kol Nidre Showed Me What It Means to Truly Belong in the Jewish Community
Tablet Magazine, September 12, 2013
On Yom Kippur two years ago, I sat in synagogue, trying to come up with a pithy slogan for Smith Magazine’s six-word memoir challenge: What’s the essence of Jewish life in six words? {link to essay}

‘Thrown Out’ of the Family Home
Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2013
There is a house I long for and yet have never set foot in. {link to story}

Giving Up Christmas
Tablet Magazine, December 19, 2012
When people hear that I converted to Judaism, the first question they ask is, “Don’t you miss Christmas?” {link to story}

The Box–A Mantra for the Writers’ Workshop
Writing on the Edge, Fall 2011
Silence would seep into the room, crossed legs would swing, papers would be shuffled whenever it came to giving manuscript feedback in my MFA workshops. {link to story}

Waiting in the Dark
Prime Number Magazine, July 2011
On the third day, they move Harry, my husband, to a private room. We return from his smoking break to find we have a different view. {link to story}

Betty Crocker in Bavaria
Natural Bridge, Summer 2010
Building a new life is never a clear-cut undertaking. You might live somewhere else from what you consider your native soil, in a different country even. {link to story}

The White World
Kaleidoscope, Winter/Spring 2010
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about my visits to Tante Herta in her nursing home in Wiesbaden, Germany, is the color white. {link to story}

Traces
Bellevue Literary Review, Spring 2007, nominated for a Pushcart Prize
When I think of you, I see railroad tracks tracing silver lines through a bluish black night. {link to story}

Images Past and Present
Under the Sun, 2006
Camel-colored houses seam the side street. Now and then a store front in coral red, dark brown, or mind green breaks up the monotony. Above a shop sign featuring a faded pear, a window is wide open, a bowl of dough set out to bask in the sun. […] My brother Klaus and I are visiting Liberec, a city one hour north of Prague. It was our grandparents’ hometown and used to be called Reichenberg. {link to story}

Paris – Dans La Rue
South Loop Review, 2005
When I lived in Germany, I visited Paris every year. The nonchalance of the city was liberating. {link to story}

A Room of His Own
Flashquake, Summer 2004
republished in A Cup of Comfort for Couples, 2010
My husband’s room is at the back of our apartment next to the kitchen. How many times have I walked by and wanted to haul out his clutter and hurl it into the trash? {link to story}