As the daughter of a sculptor, I grew up watching my mother chisel and carve pieces of wood, stone, and clay, until she brought out what she saw inside. She said what the materials ultimately revealed of themselves often surprised her. To me, the essence of writing is much the same - sculpting a story with words, with the expectation that it might not become the story you thought it was.
A Day of Small Beginnings (Little, Brown & Co, 2006) took me to Poland, where astonishing events and the look of actual places I'd only read about did not match what I thought I knew of the country. They profoundly changed the novel I thought I was writing.
My play, Stories from the Violins of Hope, and its later iteration The Violin Maker, written with Ronda Spinak, began as a list describing a collection of violins that survived the Holocaust. It revealed itself to me dramatically in asking how and why it was the story of an Israeli violin maker who brought these instruments back to life and to the world. The play has certainly taken on a life of its own - from a filmed version of the original production that found an international audience, including one at the United Nations, to the full stage productions at the Bondi Pavilion Theater in Sydney Australia, and at the International City Theater in Long Beach, California.
For over a decade, it's been my honor and privilege to work with The Braid (LA's only theater and arts company dedicated to presenting a wide diversity of contemporary Jewish stories), where actors have given voice to my short plays and where I serve the company as dramaturg, programmer and moderator, and advisory board member.