Wikipedia

Lore Segal

Lore Vailer Segal (née Groszmann; March 8, 1928 – October 7, 2024) was an Austrian-American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. She was the author of five novels, and was known for her autobiographical fiction, drawing on her life as an Austrian Jewish refugee who fled to the United Kingdom as a child, growing up in England before settling in the United States. Her fourth novel, Shakespeare's Kitchen, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.[1]

Lore Segal
Segal in 1939
Segal in 1939
BornLore Vailer Groszmann
(1928-03-08)March 8, 1928
Vienna, Austria
DiedOctober 7, 2024(2024-10-07) (aged 96)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • teacher
  • translator
NationalityAustrian–American
EducationUniversity of London (BA)
Period1964–2024
Spouse
David Segal
​
​
(m. 1961; died 1970)​
Children2

Early life

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An only child, Lore Vailer Groszmann was born on March 8, 1928, in Vienna, Austria, into a middle-class Jewish family. Her father, Ignatz, was a chief bank accountant and her mother, Franziska was a housewife.[2]

When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, Groszmann's father found himself jobless and threatened. He listed the family on the American immigration quota, and in December that year Lore Segal joined other Jewish children on the first wave of the Kindertransport rescue mission, seeking safety in England.[3]

While with her English foster parents, she found a purple notebook and started writing, filling its 36 pages with German prose. It was the beginning of a novel she would eventually write in English, Other People's Houses.[3]

On her eleventh birthday, her parents arrived in England on a domestic servants visa. Despite his refugee status, Ignatz Groszmann was labeled a German-speaking alien and interned on the Isle of Man,[4] where he suffered a series of strokes. He died a few days before the war ended.[5] Lore Groszmann and her mother then moved to London, where she attended the Bedford College for Women at the University of London on a scholarship. She graduated in 1948 with an honours degree in English literature.[6]

In 1951, after spending three years in the Dominican Republic with her mother, waiting for their US entry permit to arrive, they moved to Washington Heights, New York City, where they shared a two-room apartment with her grandmother and uncle.[2]

In 1961, she married David Segal, an editor at Knopf.[5]

Career

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Between 1968 and 1996, Segal taught writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts, Princeton, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University, from which she retired in 1996. She later taught at 92 Y.[7][better source needed]

Segal published her first novel, Other People's Houses, in 1964 to widespread acclaim.[2] Collecting her refugee stories from The New Yorker and writing a few more, Segal fictionalized her experience growing up in different households in England.[5]

In 1985, Segal's third novel Her First American was published,[2] which The New York Times praised, saying, "Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel." It tells the story of Ilka Weissnix, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe, and her relationship with Carter Bayoux, a middle-aged black intellectual, "her first American".[2] Segal based the character of Carter Bayoux on her friend Horace R. Cayton Jr., with whom she had been in a relationship for five years.[8] She received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for the novel.[9]

Shakespeare's Kitchen, published in 2007, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.[2] Thirteen stories make up the novel, each following members of a Connecticut think tank.[8]

Her last novel, Half the Kingdom, was published by Melville House in October 2013.[2]

Regarding her work, Segal said, "I want to write about the stuff – in the midst of all the stew of being a human being – that is permanent, where Adam and Eve and I would have had the same experiences. I really am less interested in the social change."[10] Her novels often deal with the process of assimilation, from a refugee arriving in a new country which must become her home (as in Her First American), to a flighty poet finding her footing in a constantly moving literary world (as in Lucinella).[2]

Segal continued to write until the end of her life, authoring short stories in The New Yorker; the last one, authored by dictation as her health declined, was published online eight days before her death.[5][11]

Personal life and death

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Segal and her husband, David, were married for nine years, until his death from a heart attack in 1970, aged 42. They had two children.[5]

Segal and her mother, Franzi Groszmann, appeared in the films My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports (1996), directed by Melissa Hacker, which was short-listed for Academy Award nomination, and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and produced by Deborah Oppenheimer, which won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2001. Segal's mother was the last survivor of the parents who placed their children in the Kindertransport program. Franzi died in 2005, one hundred years old.[4]

Segal lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.[10] She entered palliative care at her home after an apparent heart attack in June 2024, and died there from heart failure on October 7, 2024, at the age of 96.[5][8]

Work

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Novels

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  • — (1964). Other People's Houses. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. LCCN 63013508. OCLC 1397008.[5]
  • — (1976). Lucinella: A Novel. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN 0374194254. OCLC 2332250.
  • — (1985). Her First American: A Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0394536274. OCLC 230810163.
  • — (2007). Shakespeare's Kitchen. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9781595581518. OCLC 71322296.
  • — (2013). Half the Kingdom. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. ISBN 9781612193021. OCLC 844789831.

Translations

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Children's books

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  • — (1970). Tell Me a Mitzi. Illustrated by Harriet Pincus. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. LCCN 69014980. OCLC 26667931.
  • — (1973). All the Way Home. Illustrated by James Marshall. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN 0374302154. OCLC 1062877.
  • — (1977). Tell Me a Trudy. Illustrated by Rosemary Wells. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN 0374373957. OCLC 3121083.
  • — (1981). The Story of Old Mrs. Brubeck and How She Looked for Trouble and Where She Found Him. Illustrated by Marcia Sewall. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0394840399. OCLC 4592988.
  • — (1985). The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat. Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0394968174. OCLC 11397807.
  • — (2003). Morris the Artist. Illustrated by Boris Kulikov. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN 0374350639. OCLC 49616924.
  • — (2004). Why Mole Shouted and Other Stories. Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0374384177. OCLC 50192526.
  • — (2005). More Mole Stories and Little Gopher, Too. Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0374350264. OCLC 54206941.

Awards

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  • Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars Fellowship, 2008[12]
  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Shakespeare's Kitchen, 2008)[13]
  • PEN/ O. Henry Prize Story, ("Making Good," 2008)[14]
  • Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006[15]
  • Best American Short Stories, ("The Reverse Bug,"[1989] )[16]
  • The O. Henry Awards Prize Story, ("The Reverse Bug," 1990)[17]
  • University of Illinois, Senior University Scholar, 1987–1990[18]
  • National Endowment for the Arts, Grant in Fiction, 1987–1988[19]
  • American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, 1986[20]
  • Harold U. Ribalow Prize, [1986][21]
  • Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction, 1985[22]
  • Artists Grant, The Illinois Arts Council, 1985[23]
  • Grawemeyer Award for Faculty, University of Louisville, 1983[24]
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Grant in Translation, 1982
  • National Endowment for the Arts, Grant for Fiction, 1972–1973[25]
  • Creative Artists Public Service Program of New York State, 1972–1973[26]
  • American Library Association Notable Book selection (Tell Me a Mitzi, 1970)
  • National Council on the Arts and Humanities Grant, 1967–1968[27]
  • Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965–1966[9]

References

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  1. ^ Segal, Lore; Tabor, Mary L. (December 1, 2007). "A Conversation with Lore Segal". The Missouri Review. 30.4 (Winter 2007). Archived from the original on July 27, 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Penelope (October 7, 2024). "Lore Segal, Mordant Memoirist of Émigré Life, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved October 7, 2024.
  3. ^ a b Segal, Lore (2009). "AHC Interview with Lore Segal — CJH Digital Collections". Center for Jewish History. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
  4. ^ a b Martin, Douglas (October 2, 2005). "Franzi Groszmann, 100, Dies; Sent Daughter From Nazi Lands". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Shaer, Matthew (October 6, 2024). "A Master Storyteller, at the End of Her Story". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original (archive.ph) on October 6, 2024. Retrieved October 7, 2024.
  6. ^ "Lore Segal papers : 1897–2009 [bulk 1939–1990]". archives.nypl.org. Retrieved March 12, 2020. After the War, she attended Bedford College, University of London, and in 1948 received a degree in English literature. [...]In May 1951, she and much of her family emigrated to New York City.
  7. ^ "BIOGRAPHY — Lore Segal". www.loresegal.com. Archived from the original on May 8, 2004. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
  8. ^ a b c Smith, Harrison (October 9, 2024). "Lore Segal, acclaimed novelist of memory and displacement, dies at 96". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  9. ^ a b "Lore Segal". The Short Story Project. October 6, 2021. In 1965 she received the Guggenheim fellowship in creative writing followed by the National Council on the Arts and Humanities grant in 1967 and the Creative Artists Public Service Program grant in 1972. Lore Segal's novels include Lucinella (1976), Her First American (1985) winner of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award and...
  10. ^ a b Italie, Hillel (May 22, 2011). "Author Lore Segal is still in love with the world". The Dispatch / The Rock Island Argus. Associated Press. Archived from the original on April 14, 2019. Retrieved April 14, 2019.
  11. ^ "Lore Segal". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 7, 2024.
  12. ^ "The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Names 2008-2009 Fellows".
  13. ^ https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/lore-segal
  14. ^ "2010 PEN/O. Henry Prize Winners Announced".
  15. ^ Tabor, Mary L.; Segal, Lore Groszmann (2007). "A Conversation with Lore Segal". The Missouri Review. 30 (4): 53–63. doi:10.1353/mis.2008.0013.
  16. ^ https://events.newschool.edu/event/fiction_forum_lore_segal
  17. ^ "Pantheon | No Site Detected".
  18. ^ http://www.members.authorsguild.net/lsegal/bio.htm
  19. ^ https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/NEA-Annual-Report-1968.pdf
  20. ^ "Arts Institute Gives Awards". Los Angeles Times. April 8, 1986.
  21. ^ "Harold U. Ribalow Prize | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing".
  22. ^ "Plimpton to Have Role at Literary Arts Ball". Chicago Tribune. October 10, 1985.
  23. ^ https://www.mhpbooks.com/lore-segal/praise-and-awards/
  24. ^ https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/bulletin/downloads/winter2007bulletin.pdf
  25. ^ https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/193108/lore-segals-warm-and-weird-tell-me-a-mitzi
  26. ^ http://archives.nypl.org/mss/18766
  27. ^ https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/NEA-Annual-Report-1968.pdf
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