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As a teenager, poet and novelist Elizabeth Poliner was deeply serious about writing, but somewhere in college, her sense of certainty about being a writer faltered. Part of it was anxiety, not feeling I was good enough, and part the desire to stand tall before her family in a chosen vocation. Eventually, interested in public health, she decided to attend law school. But before she returned to school, she decided to take a class to shore up her grammar. This turned out to be a creative writing class taught by Michael Curtis of The Atlantic an experience that reawakened her passion for writing. A light that had gone out came on.
Poliner still attended law school and practiced for years, but after that she never stopped writing. Her life was transformed again when she attended a talk given by several Jewish-American women authors. Linda Pastan and Faye Moscowitz were thereand I can still remember that someone asked them, Are you afraid? Of course, I was terrifiedI had a secret, that I wanted to be a writer. I kept coming up with all sorts of reasons I couldnt do it. Then I heardI think it was Linda Pastansay she was terrified. I didn't know you could be a writer and still be afraid! Im so grateful for going that night. I learned that you didnt have to wait for the fear to go away.
Even her new novel, As Close To Us As Breathing, an ambitious work that explores the interconnections of a large, closely-knit Jewish family, was itself an exercise in facing fear. Id say I kept that story at bay for ten years, she laughs ruefully. I knew it was enormous and complicated. I knew it was going to be hard and I wasnt sure I was up for it. Praised by Kirkus for creating a mosaic of chronologically fragmented episodes, the novel considers the long-lasting reverberations of a tragedy; when eight-year-old Davy is killed in an accident, his death ripples out, altering the lives of everyone around him: his parents, aunts, cousins and siblings who gather each summer at Bagel Beach in Woodmont, Connecticut in a crowded summer cottage.
Poliner still attended law school and practiced for years, but after that she never stopped writing. Her life was transformed again when she attended a talk given by several Jewish-American women authors. Linda Pastan and Faye Moscowitz were thereand I can still remember that someone asked them, Are you afraid? Of course, I was terrifiedI had a secret, that I wanted to be a writer. I kept coming up with all sorts of reasons I couldnt do it. Then I heardI think it was Linda Pastansay she was terrified. I didn't know you could be a writer and still be afraid! Im so grateful for going that night. I learned that you didnt have to wait for the fear to go away.
Even her new novel, As Close To Us As Breathing, an ambitious work that explores the interconnections of a large, closely-knit Jewish family, was itself an exercise in facing fear. Id say I kept that story at bay for ten years, she laughs ruefully. I knew it was enormous and complicated. I knew it was going to be hard and I wasnt sure I was up for it. Praised by Kirkus for creating a mosaic of chronologically fragmented episodes, the novel considers the long-lasting reverberations of a tragedy; when eight-year-old Davy is killed in an accident, his death ripples out, altering the lives of everyone around him: his parents, aunts, cousins and siblings who gather each summer at Bagel Beach in Woodmont, Connecticut in a crowded summer cottage.
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