Miriam Karmel

Last updated
Miriam Karmel
BornChicago, Illinois, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison (history)
Alma materUniversity of Rochester (American labor history)
Period21st century
GenreNovel, Short story
Notable worksBeing Esther (2013), Subtle Variations and Other Stories (2017)
Notable awardsMinnesota Monthly's 2002 Tamarack Award, Kate Braverman Short Story Prize, Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction

Miriam Karmel is an American writer. Her first novel, Being Esther (2013), is one of only a few involving characters in their eighties. [1]

Contents

Karmel's writing has appeared in numerous publications including Bellevue Literary Review, The Talking Stick, Pearl , Dust & Fire, Passager Books, Jewish Women's Literary Annual, and Water~Stone Review. She is the recipient of Minnesota Monthly's 2002 Tamarack Award, the Kate Braverman Short Story Prize, and the Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction. Her story Subtle Variations was anthologized in Milkweed Editions' Fiction on a Stick. [2] [3]

Life

Karmel was born in Chicago, Illinois. She earned a degree in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master's in American labor history from the University of Rochester, and a master's in journalism from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that launched her journalism career. She moved to Minnesota in 1978. [4] Her primary focus is on short stories, but she has also written a novel and has other work published as well. [5]

Being Esther

Karmel's first novel Being Esther was published in 2013 by Milkweed Editions. It concerns an 85-year-old widow, Esther Lustig, who suddenly finds herself elderly and in the midst of a pushed-transition to an assisted-living facility she refers to as 'Bingoville'. The novel moves in and out of time, and suggests looking more closely at those who 'have more to share than we think.' [6]

Short fiction

In 2009 Karmel's short story Happy Chicken won the Carol Bly Short Story Contest, sponsored by Writers Rising Up, an Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based environmental nonprofit. [7]

In 2017 Miriam Karmel's collection Subtle Variations and Other Stories (October, 2017) won the inaugural Holy Cow! Press First Fiction Award, and a $5,000 cash prize. Karmel's submission was one of 65 manuscripts from around the region. [2] Anthony Bukoski praises Kamel for locating the universal in the details of everyday life, but states a difficulty in some cases of sorting out family relationships. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Erdrich</span> American author (born 1954)

Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.

Sandra Louise Birdsell, CM is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Métis and Mennonite heritage from Morris, Manitoba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Vizenor</span> American writer

Gerald Robert Vizenor is an American writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anzia Yezierska</span> Jewish-American novelist

Anzia Yezierska was a Jewish-American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Toews</span> Canadian writer (born 1964)

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Straight</span> American writer (born 1960)

Susan Straight is an American writer. She was a National Book Award finalist for the novel Highwire Moon in 2001.

Sun Yung Shin is a Korean American poet, writer, consultant, and educator living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Bly</span> American novelist

Carol Bly was an American teacher and an author of short stories, essays, and nonfiction works on writing. Her work often featured Minnesota women who must identify the moral crisis that is facing their community or themselves and enact change through empathy, or opening one's eyes to the realities of the situation.

Mona Susan Power is an American author from Chicago, Illinois. Her debut novel, The Grass Dancer (1994), received the 1995 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Fiction.

Miriam Tlali was a South African novelist. She was the first black woman in South Africa to publish an English-language novel, Muriel at Metropolitan, in 1975. She was also one of the first to write about Soweto. Most of her writing was originally banned by the South African apartheid regime.

Milkweed Editions is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that originated from the Milkweed Chronicle literary and arts journal established in Minneapolis in 1979. The journal ceased and the business transitioned to publishing. It releases eighteen to twenty new books each year in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Milkweed Editions annually awards three prizes for poetry: the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Jake Adam York Prize, and they are a partner publisher for the National Poetry Series. In 2016, Milkweed Editions opened an independent bookstore.

N. M. Kelby is an American short-story and novel writer.

Larry Watson is an American author of novels, poetry and short stories.

Claudia Casper is a Canadian writer. She is best known for her bestseller novel The Reconstruction, about a woman who constructs a life-sized model of the hominid Lucy for a museum diorama while trying to recreate herself. Her third novel, The Mercy Journals, written as the journals of a soldier suffering PTSD in the year 2047, won the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award for distinguished Science fiction.

Sarah Stonich is an American writer and editor based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her novel Vacationland was published by the University of Minnesota Press in April 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Michelson</span> American journalist

Miriam Michelson (1870–1942) was an American journalist and writer.

Kelly Barnhill is an American author of children's literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Her novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon was awarded the 2017 Newbery Medal. Kirkus Reviews named When Women Were Dragons one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022.

<i>Being Esther</i>

Being Esther is the first novel by Miriam Karmel. It explores the life of an 85-year-old widow, Esther Lustig, who is fully experiencing her days during which she may move from her home. She is currently living alone in a Chicago apartment building, and feels comfortable there, but her over-involved adult daughter wants her to move to an assisted-living facility or "Bingoville".

Emilie Buchwald is a literary editor and author. She is the co-founder of the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based, non-profit publisher, Milkweed Editions. In 2007, she won the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award in Publishing.

References

  1. Goetzman, Amy (April 10, 2017). "Miriam Karmel writes a portrait of an old woman as a person: In Telling Esther's story, Karmel creates a nuanced, compelling, humorous and heartbreaking portrait of aging". MinnPost . Archived from the original on March 1, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Grossmann, Mary Ann (January 23, 2017). "Minneapolis author Miriam Karmel wins 'First Fiction' award". St. Paul Pioneer Press . Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  3. "Miriam Karmel | Jewish Book Council".
  4. Grossmann, Mary Ann (March 30, 2013). "Two Twin Cities Authors Have Never Met But Share A Common Bond". St. Paul Pioneer Press . Archived from the original on August 17, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  5. Syrstad, Jocelyn (October 12, 2014). "Book Fest brings range of authors – Miriam Karmel". Leader-Telegram . Eau Claire, Wisconsin. p. 4F, 6F.
  6. Radzak, Jessica (January 9, 2014). "What We're Reading: Being Esther". HazelandWren. Archived from the original on May 2, 2021. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  7. Goetzman, Amy (October 19, 2009). "Miriam Karmel carries on Carol Bly's legacy - It wasn't quite enough for Carol Bly, the great, energetic, multitalented writer, to go down in history as one of Minnesota's most important literary voices". MinnPost . Archived from the original on August 18, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  8. Bukoski, Anthony (October 15, 2017). "Deep anxiety and household tradition mark a Jewish clan in the Midwest – FICTION: Family connections fill Minneapolis writer's debut collection of stories". Star Tribune . Minneapolis, Minnesota. p. E10.