I’m Going to Keep Writing: At 91, Lore Segal Is Still Going Strong

For the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of revisiting the writing of one of my favorite authors, Lore Segal, in her new book, The Journal I Did Not Keep, a volume that includes new fiction and previously uncollected nonfiction, as well as excerpts from her best-known work. At 91, Segal is overdue for a retrospective. Her career spans six decades and includes memoir, translation, and children’s literature. She’s known best for her stories and novels, including Shakespeare’s Kitchen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Her First American, a 1985 novel that has as much to say about race in America as anything being written now.

Her debut novel, , published in 1964, was serialized in , and is Segal’s most autobiographical work. It tells the story of a Viennese child refugee, who, like Segal, was put on the Kindertransport, a rescue effort to bring Jewish children to England from Nazi-occupied Europe and place them with foster families. Very few were ever reunited with their parents, though Segal’s parents were able to escape Austria on a domestic workers visa—which meant that they had to work as live-in servants and could not live with their daughter. Segal’s father passed away before the war ended, but Segal and her mother were able to emigrate to the U.S. in 1951. was reissued last year in that its subject matter is unfortunately quite timely in an era when refugee children are routinely separated from their parents.