Personal Reflections on my JWWS Experience
By Miriam Green
I can’t remember the year of the first seminar I attended, but the feeling of limitless possibilities filled me to the core. It was a spring afternoon, lunch in the courtyard, women from all walks of life streaming in and out.
There were impromptu writing sessions, talks on reading as a writer, what publishers were looking for, and, in between, the connecting and sharing of common goals.
I didn’t know anyone there. In fact, I felt like an outsider. Unlike many in the room, I didn’t live in Jerusalem, I wasn’t familiar with some of the magazines and publishing houses that had sponsored the seminar, and—with sheitels and tichels all around—I believed I was one of only several women who had one foot firmly planted in the secular world. And yet, that seminar gave me the sense that I had received permission to pursue my writing passionately and unswervingly.
Now, all these years later, I am about to publish my first book, The Lost Kitchen: Reflections and Recipes from an Alzheimer’s Caregiver, and I consider myself a Jewish Women’s Writers Seminar success story.
The path to establishing myself as a writer was not straightforward. Soon after that first—and then a second—seminar that I attended, I enrolled in an MA program at Bar Ilan University, the Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Program. I honed my poetry skills with extraordinary teachers, including Linda Stern Zisquit, a published poet living in Jerusalem, who became my thesis advisor. I even met the great Shirley Kaufman, one of my favorite poetry influences, who personally read and critiqued one of my poems.
Two years later, upon graduation, two things coincided to propel me in a new direction: I joined Voices Israel, a non-profit writer’s organization that provides an outlet for writers of English poetry in Israel, as a way to continue writing in a supportive framework; and my mom, living in Netanya, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
It took me several years—and several rewrites—to complete my manuscript for The Lost Kitchen. I didn’t have great confidence that I could find a publisher, but I began to send out my book. About four years ago, the Jewish Women’s Writers Seminar was scheduled on a day that I knew I had to be in Jerusalem. I took the opportunity to attend as much of the seminar as I could, listening to confident women present their workshops, and meeting new writer friends. I also scheduled interviews with as many of the publishers in attendance as I could, learning in the process how to “sell” my book and garner interest in my writing.
That seminar was a turning point. A publisher did want my book! I was ecstatic. And completely unprepared. I gratefully rejected the offer and continued on my journey to improve my manuscript.
What I took away from that seminar—something more profound to me than a publisher accepting my manuscript—was the idea that not only could I write an overtly Jewish book but that there was a market for it. I did not have to confine myself to the Jewish publishing world, but I could draw my strength from it.
Today, I blog weekly about my mom’s Alzheimer’s together with kosher recipes that also appear on my website. I have a Facebook page, and The Alzheimer’s Association, the largest world-wide association of its kind, occasionally reprints my blog knowing that I live in Israel and celebrate the Jewish holidays. In fact, I think that is part of the appeal. I am different from their mainstream writers.
It is fair to claim that I have been inspired and fortified by my attendance at several JWWS events. I do not know your names, but I thank all the strong, confident women who have taught me by example that I can—and should—follow my dreams.
This spring, I will attend the seminar as not only a participant but as a presenter, talking to other women about the publishing and marketing options for their books in a workshop I’m calling: “So, you’ve written a book. What next?” See you there! I can’t wait!
