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“Esteemed author and educator Lore Segal, who wrote and translated clever and sunny children’s tales alongside the autobiographical adult stories and novels informed by her early life as a Jewish refugee during WWII, died on October 7 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96,” reported Publishers Weekly.
Segal was born in Vienna in 1928 and was a Kindertransport refugee who left Austria for England at the age of 10.
In 2023, Segal did an interview with Uri Berliner for the Leo Baeck Institute that focused on her life and literature. She started writing in earnest when she was in a camp waiting to be placed with a foster family. When Segal arrived at the foster home in Liverpool, the family kept asking her questions. “I think nobody at that time really understood what was happening and what it was like to be living under Hitler in Europe.” Segal said she returned to telling that story over and over again.
“Segal also wrote letters to distant cousins who had previously immigrated to London, putting the wheels in motion to rescue her parents; with help from a refugee committee, they were granted domestic servant visas and arrived in England in 1939,” Shannon Maughan wrote for Publishers Weekly.
Though her parents escaped Austria, they had limited means and Segal stayed in the refugee foster program until she attended university. She graduated in 1948 with an English literature degree, and taught English in the Dominican Republic for three years while waiting for the chance to immigrate to the United States.
Her stories about the Kindertransport were serialized in the New Yorker, 1962-1964, then published as a collection, Other People’s Houses (Harcourt Brace, 1964).
Around the same time, she began writing picture books for her children. The first one published was Tell Me a Mitzi, illustrated by Harriet Pincus (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970). Earlier this year, Tell Me a Mitzi got a life when it was reissued by the New York Review of Books.
From their website, “In Tell Me a Mitzi Lore Segal’s droll dialogue and off-kilter storytelling is beautifully matched by Harriet Pincus’s gritty and colorful illustrations. These are stories that capture childhood in all its puzzlement, resourcefulness, and unsentimental wonder.”
Pamela Rafalow Grossman wrote about the book for Kveller in August, “even though ‘Mitzi’ mentions nothing about religion, it seems unmistakably Jewish.” A sequel, Tell Me a Trudy, illustrated by Rosemary Wells (FSG, 1977), was published seven years later.
Segal also translated The Juniper Tree, and Other Tales from Grimm by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm with Randall Jarrell, illustrated by Maurice Sendak (FSG, 1974) and The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless, Her Cat, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky (Knopf, 1985).
“The first lot of children’s books were written for my children and the next ones were written for my grandchildren,” Segal told Uri Berliner. Those for her grandchildren were Why Mole Shouted, and Other Stories, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier (FSG, 2004) and its sequel, More Mole Stories and Little Gopher, Too, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier (FSG, 2005).
In 2008, Segal’s adult novel, Shakespeare’s Kitchen (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Segal taught writing at various universities for much of her life, including Columbia, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, University of Illinois and Ohio State.
She also continued writing short stories for the New Yorker. Her last one, “Stories About Us” was published in September. An exhibit on Segal’s life and writing is on display at the Bezirksmuseum Joseftadt in Vienna through January 2025.
Cynsational Notes
Gayleen Rabakukk holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has published numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and two regional interest books for adults. She is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.
She serves as board member for Lago Vista’s Friends of the Library and also leads a book club for young readers at the library. She’s active in Austin SCBWI and has taught creative writing workshops for the Austin Public Library Foundation. She loves inspiring curiosity in young readers through stories of hope and adventure. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.