Carol Bergman

Carol Bergman’s short stories, poems and narrative nonfiction have been published in Willow Review, Onion Review, A Room of One’s Own, Absinthe Literary Review, The Bridge, Potpourri, Epiphany and many other publications in the US and the UK. “Objects of Desire,” appearing in Lilith and Whetstone Literary Review was nominated for a 1999 Pushcart Prize in nonfiction. “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” was published by Orbis Books (US/Canada) and Earthscan Books (UK/Commowealth) in October, 2003 and was nominated for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. It has been translated into Korean and Chinese. Her articles, essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in numerous publications in the UK and the US including The New York Times, The Times (of London), The Christian Science Monitor, The Daily News Magazine, The Amsterdam News, Newsday, Cosmopolitan, Woman’s World, Family Circle, Art Times, Cineaste, and Salon.com. She is the author of two film biographies (Mae West & Sidney Poitier) and the ghostwriter of Captain Kangaroo’s autobiography, Growing Up Happy (Doubleday, 1989). A memoir, “Searching for Fritzi,” was published in 1999. A book of novellas, “Searching for Klimt” was published in Fall, 2006 and is the winner of a Reader's Choice, Editor's Choice and Publisher's Choice award. She has a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in Media Studies from The New School. She is one of the founding faculty of Gotham Writers’ Workshop and has been teaching in the NYU writing program since 1997. She is also an editor and private writing coach.

Writer's Statement

I was born and raised in New York City in a refugee community—both of my parents escaped the Nazi genocide, both were physicians. I plumbed whatever enlightned passions they had brought with them from Europe-literature, art, music-as I was growing up. But becoming a writer in the English language did not seem possible until I got to college. I thought all I had to do was live in Paris, wear a long trench coat, long earrings, black stockings, and I'd be a writer.

I did travel to Europe with my husband, and stayed ten years. In my imagination, I was retracing my parents' journey across the Atlantic in reverse. I wanted to experience Europe first-hand. What had happened to them there? Why did they have to leave so suddenly, so violently? I traveled a lot, and began to speak French with some fluency. I avoided German until I began work on the memoir about my mother's family, "Searching for Fritzi."

While my husband attended the LSE, I landed a job teaching in the still colonial English secondary schools and started to write about my experiences. The little WH Smith orange notebooks I kept during those years abroad in which I recorded observations, dialogue, thoughts, was the beginning of my writing life. I began to write essays for British journals, and worked as a reporter for the BBC and the Times Educational Supplement, all excellent training for a writer. I did not attempt fiction until my return to the United States a decade later when an editor of mine invited me into a writer's group. I wrote a story a week for two years, all practice, until I felt ready to send them out. I was suprised when the acceptances came in as I was writing them primarily as a relief from journalism and the language arts textbooks I was writing to earn extra money. As I began to take the fiction seriously, it seemed harder to do and then, for a while, the only thing I wanted to do.

Nowadays, I enjoy fiction and nonfiction projects. I have also started writing poetry. I teach narrative nonfiction at NYU and I also have private students who are working in a variety of genres: memoirs, how-to books, travelogues and short stories.