Reflections on Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, (Auto)Biography, Life-Writing, and the Essay
16 Feb 2012 at 06:31
Julija Šukys
Archives, Biography, Children, Countdown to Publication, Creative Nonfiction, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Epistolophilia, Friendship, Funding, Journeys, Letters, Libraries, Life-writing, Lithuania, Marketing, Memoir, Mothering, Ona Šimaitė, Publicity, Publishing, Research, SheWrites, Silence is Death, Uncategorized, Vilna Ghetto, Vilnius, Writing
The day before yesterday I received a note from my publisher saying that copies of my book had arrived in the warehouse, and that I could begin announcing its publication. Though my official date of publication is March 1, 2012, the baby’s come early. It’s a strange and great feeling to know that my book [...]
19 Jan 2012 at 04:22
Julija Šukys
Academia, Algeria, Archives, Biography, Catholicism, Children, Christianity, Countdown to Publication, Creative Nonfiction, Domesticity, Eastern Europe, Editing, Epistolophilia, Grad School, Journeys, Libraries, Lithuania, Mothering, Ona Šimaitė, Paris, Research, Residencies and Fellowships, Russia, Saints, SheWrites, Siberia, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout, Uncategorized, Writing
This is Who-Man. My son and I invented him over breakfast this morning. Who-Man is a superhero whose arch-enemy is a many-eyed monster called “Crime.” Who-Man wears a bumpy suit (as you can see in Sebastian’s rendition of him above). The suit can shoot fire, but our hero rarely has to use this weapon. He [...]
12 Jan 2012 at 05:09
Julija Šukys
Academia, Biography, Canada, Countdown to Publication, Creative Nonfiction, E-books, Editing, Epistolophilia, Memoir, Publishing, SheWrites, Silence is Death, Uncategorized, Writing
For almost ten years now, there’s been growing anxiety in the writing community about the “publishing crunch.” Essentially, what’s happened is this: publishers find themselves in increasing financial peril; they need to make money, so they try to make safe bets. The result for readers is a “narrowing of the breadth and depth and diversity of [...]
My thanks to Mouloud Belabdi, who writes beautifully on his blog, “Chroniques de Montréal,” about the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout, assassinated in 1993. Djaout was the subject of my first book, Silence is Death. How pleased I was to read Belabdi’s description of my book: Son livre est une méditation constante sur la mort, la [...]
Today my son Sebastian pulled out a chess set that I bought in Jerusalem’s Old City years before his birth. He tucked it under his arm and explained to me in a very serious tone that the chess set was his “work.” First, he set up the chess pieces like bowling pins and knocked them [...]
15 Apr 2010 at 13:24
Julija Šukys
Life-writing, Ona Šimaitė, Research, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout
“How many times has someone said that writings of a particular woman had no value because they were merely about daily events?” — Elizabeth Hampsten, Read This Only to Yourself. The term “life-writing” designates private texts not written for publication, primarily letters and diaries. It can tell us a lot about the past, how people [...]
26 Mar 2010 at 08:56
Julija Šukys
Algeria, Biography, Journeys, Research, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout
I recently came across an article referring to my book, Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout, in El Watan, a major Algerian newspaper. The piece’s author, Benhouna Bensadat Mustapha, writes about the Algerian national hero, Emir Abdelkader (or Abd El Kader), the Iowa town of Elkader that was named for him, [...]
08 Mar 2010 at 09:56
Julija Šukys
Autobiography, Beloved Profession, Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Eastern Europe, Language and Multilingualism, Letters, Life-writing, Lithuania, Ona Šimaitė, Research, Russia, Siberia, Silence is Death, Tahar Djaout, Vilna Ghetto, Writing
For a long time I resisted calling myself a biographer. I didn’t mean to write these kinds of stories, or those kinds of books. But, like all the best things in life (cats, love) — biography chose me. Despite myself, and despite having been trained as a literary scholar at a time when the author [...]
