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Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET JEANNETTE KATZIR
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| Jeannette Katzir |
I enjoy reading non-fictions more, but I found that writing fiction was easier. Non-fiction limits you, if you are to stay true to the characters or events. Fiction opens any and all doors/possibilities.
What kinds of things inspire you to right?
I am inspired to write by things that cause me great emotional upheaval. I began writing this book over 6 years ago because I knew I needed to begin writing these things while my Momila was still alive. Lately I have penned an article about my father’s battle against cancer. For me trying to answer or describe the unanswerable sorrows of life cause me to write.
Where do you get your ideas?
The idea for BROKEN BIRDS, gave itself to me prior to my mother’s death. Her stories about the Holocaust held me spell bound but sent me out on a journey for the truth should she would not share. Then my own life as the child of that mother provided me with an endless about of material, and when she died the pain was so intense, that I was often unable to type as fast and the book came to me.
Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?
I would have loved to have been able to write this from my imagination or memories, but the book is a memoir, and I did not have all the facts, so I began research and loved it. I enjoyed reading, speaking and learning other persons’ similar and different takes on events. I am not only speaking about my mother’s time in the forest, or my dad’s time in the camps, but discussions with my siblings about what they felt our childhood was life. There were five of us, who lived under the same room, with the same parents, who lived the same history, but our recollections or views of these times are so different.
What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?
Taking a much needed emotional break, I am collaborating on a series of children’s books with two friends. Make no mistake, writing for children comes with it’s own issues and limitations. But I hope to have the book before the publishers sometime this summer.
Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?
With my first book, BROKEN BIRDS, I wrote any and every chance I had. I am a mother, grandmother and work with/for my husband, so any times when I found a quiet (hahaha) moment . . . I wrote.
Do you like to include humor in your stories? Or Adventure? Or mystery?
In BROKEN BIRDS, there is one chapter where my parents, two survivors meet to soon-to-be in-laws. This was a humorous chapter just because my parents are who they are. I feel If you are going to write something as difficult as the Holocaust and a broken family, some humor is needed in order to let the reader exhale.
Is there anything about yourself that you’d like to share – hobbies, where you were born, special talents other than writing/illustrating.
I was born on June 1, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York, but have lived in California most of my life. I have been doodling since I was in the 4th grade, and even penned a coming of age treatment with a girlfriend when we were about twenty. Apart from writing I have three loves 1) Photography – Animals and nature. 2) Horses – I have been riding horses (Mostly to my mother’s chagrin), since I was about fifteen. 3) Being a parent and/grandparent – Children and grandchildren give me a kind of anchoring like nothing else on this earth.