Carol Ascher

I was born in Cleveland, shortly after my parents arrived in the US, and grew up in Topeka, Kansas. Afraid to try to support myself entirely by my writing, I got a doctorate in Anthropology and spent much of my work life in New York City, studying public schools, doing my personal writing in the early mornings, on weekends, and during vacations Of my six books, my new novel, A Call from Spooner Street, (Mill City, fall 2015), an earlier novel,The Flood (Curbstone, 1996, and Northwest University, 2005) and my memoir, Afterimages (Holmes & Meier, 2008), all explore my those parts of my life that have been indelibly formed by living amidst those who fled the Holocaust. In addition to scholarly studies of public education, I've published essays in the New York Times, the Hartford Courant, The Nation, and Ms. Magazine. My stories and essays have appeared in ACM, Witness, New Letters, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Shenandoah and Tikkun. I have received awards from the New York Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Literature. These days I live in the country and am happily writing pretty much full-time, which allows me to try out ideas in both fiction and nonfiction. For more, see carolascher.net