Goldstein, Naama 1969(?)-

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GOLDSTEIN, Naama 1969(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1969, in Boston, MA. Education: Attended Stern College and Washington University, St. Louis; Vermont College, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Allston, MA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Maria Massie, Inkwell Management, 521 Fifth Ave., Suite 2600, New York NY 10175. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Worked as bartender, accountant, receptionist, language instructor, librarian, and social services worker.

AWARDS, HONORS: Nomination, Pushcart Prize, 2002; Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Senior Research Award, 2003.

WRITINGS:

The Place Will Comfort You: Stories, Scribner (New

York, NY), 2004.

Goldstein's stories have been anthologized in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops 1998 and First Harvest: Jewish Writing in St. Louis 1991-1997. Goldstein's stories have also appeared in literary magazines such as Republic of Letters and Arts & Letters.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel "set in Israel and the American Midwest."

SIDELIGHTS: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, writer Naama Goldstein moved with her family to Israel when she was three years old and returned to the United States at the age of seventeen. Her first book, the story collection The Place Will Comfort You, reflects this dual heritage. A critic for Kirkus Reviews commented that in these stories, Goldstein explores "tensions between individual freedom and religious and nationalist solidarity, as experienced mostly by girls or young women." In "A Pillar of a Cloud," a visiting American upsets her young Israeli cousins when she extends unconventional hospitality toward an Arab repairman. A child's attempt to resist the burden of Jewish history is explored through the experience of a finicky eater in "Pickled Sprouts." In "The Conduct for Consoling" schoolgirls reencounter their country from the alien perspective of a Jordanian-television propaganda broadcast. In "The Roberto Touch" Goldstein examines the competing ideologies of two high school students, one drawn to settlement living, and the other to rock 'n' roll. Another story in the collection, "The Verse in the Margins," portrays an Orthodox Jewish teacher who channels his wartime horror into an overzealous campaign to protect his female students from their budding sexuality.

Reviewers reacted most strongly to the language in Goldstein's stories, as well as the author's treatment of her politically charged material. Molly Abramowitz, writing in Library Journal, called it a "quirky debut collection," further noting that "readers who like their short fiction decidedly eccentric and off-center will be interested." Danise Hoover commented in Booklist that The Place Will Comfort You is "unusual and somewhat discomfiting." For Hoover, Goldstein's language is "difficult and somewhat off-putting," a hybrid of English vocabulary and Hebrew syntax. But a critic for Publishers Weekly called the collection a "funny, moving debut" and remarked that "this resonant collection captivates and provokes."

Goldstein told CA: "I have been drawn to artistic expression from a very early age. Growing up in Israel I engaged almost exclusively in the visual arts, painting and drawing. Writing did not occur to me as a creative medium until relatively late, possibly because in the religious girls' schools I attended creative writing activities were rare, consisting of the odd personal essay and poem, as well as lyrics written for our annual Jerusalem Day song competition. I wrote my first self-assigned piece when I was sixteen. I used a fresh school notebook on which I wrote the title The Purple Book. The notebook I wrote in was brown, but the content concerned a purple book filled with great wisdom. At first people try to perpetuate the wisdom peacefully but in the end they use the book to pound others with it over the head—fatally. This was an allegorical work. I sent a copy to a cousin who was studying for their Rabbinic ordination, but remember no response. I didn't continue in this vein or in fact write much at all until I enrolled as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis. While I was there, I attended a series of writing workshops. The honest encouragement of my first teachers, Robert Earleywine and the late Stanley Elkin, planted the seed of determination that would germinate about six years later, when I returned to fiction writing in earnest.

"The strongest influence on my writing, I suspect, comes from the Jewish liturgy and Biblical passages I was exposed to during my formative years. I am also influenced by the many works of Israeli poetry set to popular music and played over radio airways. The rhythm of sentences is extremely important to me, as well as an incantatory lingo that seems to live in a slightly separate sphere from everyday speech. I am no longer a religious person, but I believe human temperament is essentially prayerful, for better and for worse. I have found that my manner of writing expresses that worldview."