historical fiction

Researching and Reimagining Margot Frank

In my novel,  Margot , I reimagine Margot Frank, Anne’s older sister, having survived the war and come to Philadelphia where ...

Writing What You’ve Never Seen: Janice Weizman and Historical Fiction

All fiction writers have a streak of audacity. To make up something and then ask readers to suspend their disbelief ...

Deciding to Forgo Research

One of the great pleasures of writing for me is researching historical events and details that help me understand and ...

Whose Story Is It?

The first step for me in writing fiction is deciding which of my characters is telling the story. I might ...

Places Never Seen

My most recently published novel, The Other Side of the World, contains a 100-page novel-within-the-novel set entirely in Singapore and Borneo. The ...

Sarah’s Key, Mary’s Secrets, and Truth That’s Stranger Than Fiction

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But it can be hard to tell.I did an enormous amount of research for ...

The Joint

Earlier this week, Leslie Maitland wrote about choosing an epigraph, the artist Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteineproject, and reconnecting branches of her family ...

Jews and Indians, Past and Present

This is a guest post by Andrew Tertes, the author of Jacob’s Return. He is blogging here today for Jewish ...

Blazing Saddles It Wasn’t

When a modern audience thinks of American Indians and American Jews, the image that comes to mind is likely to be ...

A Jewish Magician at the Egyptian Theatre

When you do anything creative – from writing stories to hooking rugs – people are likely to ask you where ...