“No
one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are
born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has
self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't
confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.” – Cynthia
Ozick
Born
in New York City on April 17, 1928, Ozick has written fiction and a wide range
of nonfiction, including politics, history, literary criticism, and The
Holocaust. Ozick’s lyrical fiction style has earned such accolades
as “The greatest living American writer” (from several of her contemporaries),
and the title “The Emily Dickinson of The Bronx.” And her essay
style has been called everything from “uncompromising” to “biting” to
“brilliant.”
She
has authored 7 novels, 8 short-story collections (her short stories have won
multiple O. Henry Award first prizes), and 10 books of essays. Still going strong on the eve of her 98th
birthday, she released In a Yellow Wood: Selected Stories and Essays in
2025.
Recipient of a National Jewish Book Council
Award for Lifetime a=Achievement, she also was a finalist for the National Book
Award (for her Puttermesser Papers), won both the PEN/Nabokov and
PEN/Malamud Awards, and earned the Presidential Medal for the Humanities. Her works have been translated into 17
languages.
“In
an essay, you have the outcome in your pocket before you set out on your
journey, and very rarely do you make an intellectual or psychological
discovery,” she said. “But when you write fiction, you don't know
where you are going - sometimes down to the last paragraph. That is the pleasure of it."
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