London! and cross pollination cont'd

London! and cross pollination cont'd

I have lovely news for the new year; I’ve been invited to London’s Book Week, sponsored by the London Jewish Literary Foundation. I’ll be presenting on March 10 with Amanda Craig, a British journalist and novelist who writes real page turners. Please join me if you’re in town!

I wanted to continue the discussion from last week about cross pollination. This week, I’m thinking about fiction and nonfiction cross pollinating.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman and I did an event last Sunday in which she presented her nonfiction book, THE POLITZER SAGA, the in-credible story of her Jewish family. Her parents and two grandmothers, all Hungarian refugees, never discussed their backgound. Linda and her five siblings grew up surrounded by family secrets. She did not learn that her father was Jewish until she was 27. Her parents’ survival in Nazi occupied Budapest was a miracle.

Linda and her siblings knew none of this. An in-credible part of this story was what led Linda to trace her family back to the 1700s. Following a horrendous fire at her parents’ Buffalo home, a box emerged from the ashes whose contents unlocked a trove of family secrets.

Linda and I felt our books spoke to each other, as fiction and nonfiction books often do. It was a pleasure to share them together.

With Linda Ambrus Broenniman.

Signing books at the event.

Along similar lines, I recently spoke at a historical novel conference on writing about collective trauma. As I thought about it, I realized many memoirs do this well and could be valuable to fiction writers. There’s no reason a novelist can’t learn from a memoir writer, and vice versa. Authors travel back and forth across these genres, which continue to blur in contemporary writing. If you are interested in watching my talk, you can do so here.

I hope your new year is off to a healthy and peaceful start.

Love, Martha

P.S. ICYMI last week’s post, “Dancer/painter Margaret Garrett: the interview; hello 2024,” here it is.