Hi Kim, Re. "scrubbing anxiety" (love the phrase and see its application to just about everything I write :-)] from the first few pages of your manuscript--I think it would be fine, even exciting, to see a scene later on of what you do, how you procrastinate or whatever when you're feeling doubts about trying to write the life your sister never led. It *is* a radical thing to be doing. But I think if you just launch into the fictional memoir first, you'll have already proved to us it can be done before you show this shadow side. You handle other radical moves with such confidence and with no second guessing. Your spiritual connection with your sister, it's stages and meaning, you write with grace, clarity, and authority and so even those of us coming from a tradition that privileges logic and the material world feel an opening up. I think in the first few pages, it's a matter of cutting a bit more rather than revising. Your sister's tree and her charging you to write the life she didn't have are powerful images and a great place to start even if the reader doesn't quite yet know what you're about to do. I'll make suggestions on the page when I get back to it. The whole project is exciting. I keep thinking I'd love to have my own sister read it....Karen

Hi Kim! Thanks so much for the warm welcome.

And yes, I just recently decided to dip my exploratory toes in the SheWrites group waters. Amazing this one has grown so quickly!!! It felt like a good healthy stretch for me to consider myself worthy of this group, even though the Jewishness in my writing isn't necessarily flashing with red lights. : )

I miss you and Renate very much, and think of you often and fondly. Big big hug to you, and enjoy this holiday season...

Love,
Rosy

Great! Please send my manuscript to krsosnoski@gmail.com. Looking fwd. To reading it. More soon... Karen

Hi Kim! I just received your book and am looking forward to reading it! Looks like plenty of food for thought. I'll also see who'll "bite" on the possibility of a review. -- Best, Debbie

Dear Kim,
I'm so glad! Just send the manuscript by email when you're ready. I looked at my dissertation. I may just send a chapter or two that are about you if I can find them on computer file to email. Otherwise I may just mail you a few pages that I think will be of interest to you. The whole thing is way too long--I can't even get through it and I only have to skim. But I think you might be interested in reading a few pages of my book in progress, and a blog post I'm going to put up next week (about the movie Precious), so I'll get a few things like that together for you. I really can't wait to read "My SIster and the Kabbalist." Let me know what kind of feedback will be most helpful to you. Thanks! Karen

That's so strange and kind of wonderful--I love mysteries like this that are real--the coincidence or connection of you having your own sister haunting and writing a personal book about it while I used your writing on mothers/daughters/hunger to identify a sister-haunting myth in other women's fictions. Is there any way I could read your book or parts of it, even if you don't (yet) want to publish it? I'm just so curious....I would be happy to mail you a copy of my dissertation--(unless I can find a draft on my computer) for you to skim. (If you do want to look at it, you'll have to promise to read one or two short pieces I've written recently as well--the ideas in the dissertation are good, I think, but the writing is not.) You know the really strange thing is that I remember trying to find your phone number years ago, right after I'd finished my dissertation, when I was in San Francisco, CA. I had some idea about interviewing you for something but I don't remember what...usually I just have hunches that I want to write about or at least meet people and about 1/4 of the time it manifests in something on paper or radio. Don't worry though, I would never write about unpublished material without an author's consent and I'm the opposite of pushy. I'm just happy to be meeting you this way and have this feeling that I'm going to find a resolution to whatever questions were propelling my dissertation.

Dear Kim,

That would be great! I can ask the book review editor at Lilith if they'd be interested in a review (I've already reviewed two books for them, so we're in touch); and if they're not, I can ask the editor of Bridges (who might be even more interested, since they're more politically oriented).

My address is: 13 Ein Gedi St., Jerusalem 93383, Israel.

This list is great! From faraway Israel, I feel at right at home.

Hi Kim, I was excited to see your name pop up on this network as (years ago) I wrote my doctoral dissertation (Brandeis) on "SIster Haunting and Female Hunger in Contemporary American Fiction by Women." I identified an emerging culturally grounded myth in the fictions that I studied and your work, particularly in Reinventing Eve, informed my conclusion. I'm writing quite different stuff now and it looks like you are too, but again I'm happy to be reminded of your writing and look forward to checking out your newer work. Best! Karen