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Recently published articles
Paris has tackled gridlock. Doug Ford could learn a lesson from the ancient city
“I’ve just returned from a trip to Paris, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and also one of the most forward-looking. How I wish Premier Doug Ford would hop on a plane and go visit, to see what’s working there and how successfully this ancient city is moving toward the future, not the past.”
Featured in the Toronto Star
My Toronto backyard became my cottage - all it took was a certain chair
“Recently I saw that zero gravity chairs like my friend’s were on
sale, and impulsively, I bought one and carried it home. When I sat down and tilted backwards with my feet elevated, a whole new world opened up. I found myself gazing at the tops of trees and the sky.”
Featured in the Toronto Star
In the small room
“I’m going to see my mentor and confidante — my psychoanalyst. A trusted guide, a wise older woman hired to think about me, to help me figure myself out.
She listens.”
Featured in A Considerable Age
Handbag on the Train
“How much can flash into the brain in an instant. In the handbag: my wallet with all my money and credit cards. My passport. The keys to the flat in Montpellier. My camera, address book, and phone.”
Featured in A Considerable Age
The Spielberg List
“I want to make a film about your extraordinary life. I need you to give me a list of the ten most important scenes that have to be in the film, to explain who you are and why.”
Featured in Brevity Blog
The Oxford Story
When my first book came out, I was confident it would do well. Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin is the only full-length biography of my father’s titanic grandfather, a playwright whose scores of plays, including The Jewish King Lear, were produced on the Lower East Side and then all over the Yiddish-speaking world. The book had been a massive undertaking… But a year later, I’d been greatly disappointed by the reception.
Featured in Queen’s Quarterly
The Garden of Delight
I’d always thought gardens were a bother. For years, my husband handled all the “yard work,” as he called it. “I’ll be out back taming nature,” he’d say, before going out to cut the grass. Except for a petunia or two, that was the extent of gardening at our house. He tried to keep the edges neat, and I tried to ignore the whole thing. It was hard enough keeping the kids alive and the house livable without adding another great big room — filled with leaves and bugs and backbreaking work — to my chores.
Featured in aconsiderableage
Bright Fragments
I decided to slam together a new book consisting almost entirely of essays that had already, by being published, proven their worth. How easy this will be, I thought. The content was already written. There’d just be compiling and a bit of tweaking. Ha!
Featured in Brevity Blog
Correspondence
Barbara, my childhood pen pal, died in June 1966, at the age of 16. I calculated: it was now February 11, 2008, so I’d been carrying her letters around for nearly 42 years.
Featured in Queen’s Quarterly
Portrait of the Artist: My Visit with Alice Neel
Nervously dialling the number Dad had given me, I was relieved to find Alice friendly and welcoming. I told her I was Gordin Kaplan’s daughter, an actress on a brief visit to New York. “Kappy’s daughter? An actress?” she boomed. “Come on over—have tea!”
Featured in The New Quarterly
Learning to Speak
So I’m pacing about the room in my respectable suit from Goodwill, incredibly nervous, thinking, Who do you think you are? You’re a fake. This will be a disaster. They’ll hate … And then I stop. I just stop.
Featured in Brevity Blog
Secret
My friend leaned closer and told me softly that her mother had recently died. “After the funeral,” she said, her face expressionless, “Dad finally apologized to me for what happened during my childhood.” As she took a breath to go on, I knew. I knew what she was going to say.
Featured in Full Grown People
Greater density in the city
Premier Doug Ford, stuff your archaic, environmentally destructive plan. Focus on providing family housing and amenities in this neglected, underfunded, vibrant metropolis.
Featured in Toronto Star
The romance of silver
Deep in my handbag was my mother’s special antique spoon, wrapped in a soft blue cloth.
Featured in The Globe and Mail
The vaccine is a gift
The issue of vaccine skepticism is personal for me. Because my father, first of all, was a scientist who believed with all his heart in the efficacy and power of rigorous scientific exploration and discovery. But also because, just after my first birthday, he nearly died of polio.
Featured in The Globe and Mail
Telling your story
Here are seven tips on how to unearth significant memories and turn them into compelling stories.
Featured in Zoomer