I was born in Bamberg, Germany, on February 20th, 1947. My parents, Alfred and Rachel Birnbaum, had been displaced by the war from their homes in Lvov in the Ukraine. My parents are the only two survivors of two large Jewish families. After a brief stint in an American displaced persons camp our family of …
"I feel it's an incredibly high standard that you have to hold the short story to because there is no room for that really common, perfectly understandable difficulty."
"Every semester I get writers who are much more gifted than I am -- and more gifted than others -- and you can see they have this natural ability. I've seen over the years that doesn't make a whit of difference. You need something else."
"If you go to a small press fair, it's like world of publishing for the visually blind. They don't really want to look at anything."
