Brenda Webster's Blog
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Apr.25.2014
It has been years since Parkinsons disease was defined as a movement disorder: shaking, freezing, falling. unable to go through doors. What? Doors. Why? It's tempting to give a metaphysical interpretation: the door leading to heaven, the frozen walker condemned to hell. But it isn't God apparently...
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Apr.23.2014
I want to thank Jim Foster for an interview that almost made me cry. He read a page of my novel AFTER AUSCHWITZ:A LOVE STORY with just the right degree of feeling. It was sad--and being an older man himself he got that beautifully. But he also got the humor. Looking over at him I saw that he...
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Jan.10.2014
Laura Albert's video on The Moth was remarkable. When she started speaking, I could barely hear her voice then gradually it got stronger as she found her vocation and her true self. She says that she felt so ashamed of everything about herself that she had to create an avatar in order to...
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Dec.18.2013
Recently I was discussing John Banville's prize winning book, The Untouchables with my book group. Someone brought up the question of whether or not there is a specifically "gay" art. Just musing about the topic. My mother used to dislike being praised as a woman artist instead of just an...
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Mar.15.2012
My independent publisher WINGS Press just lost 40% of its profits. Just like that--from one day to the next. Just because they wouldn't accept Amazon's terms for a new contract. Terms which would have forced them to lose money on every book. 5,000 e-books dropped just like that inluding my book...
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Mar.05.2012
Last week my book Vienna Triangle was ranked number two on Amazon it stayed there moving form the Daily Deal to best in Historical Fiction. It was on the top ten for over a week. And then just as suddenly as it came it vanished. "No longer available."
Up until last week I was like many others...
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Feb.20.2012
The day before Valentine's Day I got a call that my book was ranking second on Amazon. That seemed impossible but when I looked, there it was. Then I noticed that Amazon had chosen it for their Daily Deal to sell at .99. I wondered what that meant in terms of sales. Amazon is difficult to untangle...
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Nov.17.2011
Interview by Brenda Webster
BW: What made you decide to write about love?
LA: It is something of a bizarre or perhaps grandiose subject to explore, given how many books have been there before. It’s the principle subject of the novel, of course. It certainly was of my novels. But it’s also the...
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Sep.26.2010
I was rejected twice by the SF Psychoanalytic Institute when I applied as a candidate. Now, their name changed to SF Psychoanalytic Center, they have asked me to be on their Board of Directors. What is going on? Psychoanalysis is embattled, "pushed to the margins" as one recent author...
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Sep.21.2010
The central square in Oaxaca is bright with Christmas lights strung in the trees. Flocks of multicolored balloons strain against the light strings that hold them back from the fading sky. It is the Night of the Radishes and even at this early hour-it is barely dusk-the line curls snake-like...
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Jul.28.2010
My earliest memories are filtered through my mother's psychoanalytic lens. She liked to recall her favorite incidents from my childhood and delightedly repeat them to me over the years.
My own first memory, when I am five years old, is of her standing by the window in a pale peach silk kimono,...
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Feb.03.2010
Psychoanalysis is in many ways like a religion. People trace their lineage as it were from the Prophet Freud and from his early disciples. Sitting on stage in front of an audience of 130 people at the Austrian Cultural Forum, I wondered what the analystsin the audience would say about what could be...
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Jan.07.2010
I just got asked to be on the Leonard Lopate show and wanted to share. Jan. 14th at 1:00 Eastern time
I've long been a fan of his. Love his brisk intelligent questioning.
And after feeling grim about the world and the fate of books, am cheered.
So off to New York on Saturday and after the Lopate...
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Dec.16.2009
In just a few short weeks I'll be talking about Freud as a fictional character to a group of people who either belong to the Austrian Cultural Forum or the American Psychoanalytic Association. Will they bombard me with tomatoes? Or have they--the analysts in particular--gotten more mellow, perhaps...
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Sep.07.2009
Huang Xiang condemned to death in China, has found asylum here. He is a slender man, always in motion, singing to himself, moving, full of kinetic energy which explodes as he reads his extraordinary poems. You would not imagine, seeing him that he had spent twelve years in prisons and labor camps...
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About Brenda
Brenda Webster, author of the forthcoming novel, AFTER AUSCHWITZ: A Love Story (Wings Press, March 3, 2014) was born in New York City, educated at Swarthmore College, Barnard, Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her...
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Causes Brenda Webster Supports
Doctors Without Borders
The Nature Conservancy
Women Support Women
International PEN
Poetry Flash