lystn

Non-fiction narratives of trauma – in the form of journalism, family history, documentary and memoir – are now a feature of all the arts and many professions. Thousands of non-professional authors in the 21st century are also writing and, thanks to new technologies, self-publishing their narratives. Speaking from her own experience as well as an archive of letters and e-mails she has assembled from readers over 30 years, Epstein, a veteran journalist, biographer and memoirist, examines the motivations and rewards of writing traumatic narrative and compares the process to the healing effects of psychotherapy. Helen Epstein began her professional career as a reporter for the Jerusalem Post while she was a musicology major at Hebrew University. After journalism school at Columbia University, she became a freelance cultural journalist for the New York Times and the first tenured female professor of journalism at New York University. After the death of her mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, Epstein began an eight-year exploration into her Jewish ancestry, reconstructing an untold history from three generations of women. in 1979, her first book Children of the Holocaust quickly became a classic that was subsequently translated into French, German, Italian, Czech, Swedish and Japanese. "An enormous achievement," wrote the Chicago Tribune. "Heart-wrenching and unforgettable." Born in Prague and raised speaking Czech in the Czech emigre community of post-war New York City, Epstein was always fascinated by that culture. She wrote about it in her 2005 memoir, Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s History, a major contribution to both Jewish family history and the social history of Central European women. In her essay, “Coming to Memoir as a Journalist,” Epstein recounts her journey into this literary hybrid of journalism and memoir, reflecting that “unlike journalism, which demands that reporters ignore or subsume that subjective reality, memoir encourages writers to plumb it.” In her writing, Epstein enjoys working through the challenges of exploring the depths of subjective experience as it is informed by her journalistic, empirical research.