News and Events
Fiction Writer Lore Segal Gives Reading to Packed Audience
Segal, who taught at Ohio State from 1991 to 1996, was introduced by her friend and former colleague, Michelle Herman, who called Segal "the only true mentor I've ever had."
"She's one of the best writers of our time," Herman said. "She's wisely appreciated by other writers, not anywhere near as well known as she should be outside of literary circles. She's not prolific, and that's part of it–but she also doesn't pander, ever, in even the tiniest way. She is a ferociously uncorruptible writer. I can't think of any living writer I would rather read."
Segal, who was born in Vienna in 1928, and spent several years living away from her family during World War II, read her short story, "Other People's Deaths," which explores the social awkwardness of interacting with someone whose spouse has just died. The difficulty is exemplified by the character, Dr. Alfred Stone: "Alfred mistakenly believed himself to be singularly lacking in what normal people–the people in this room–were born knowing. He thought that other people knew how to feel and what to say."
Segal, who received her B.A. in English from the University of London in 1948, has worked as a novelist, essayist, translator, and writer of children's books. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowments for the Arts, and the Humanities. Her reviews appear in the New York Times Book Review and her stories in the New Yorker. Her story "The Reverse Bug" was included in Best American Short Stories, 1989 and won a prize in Prize Stories 1990, The O.Henry Awards. She has taught at Columbia University's School of the Arts, Princeton, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence, the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as Ohio State. Novels include: Other People's Houses, and Her First American. Her children's books include Tell Me a Mitzi, and most recently, Why Mole Shouted and other Stories.
