BiographyCarol 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/ 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. |
![]() Photo of Carol Bergman by Chloe Annetts |
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