Lucinella

Lore Segal was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. Her father was an accountant in a bank, but as a Jew was fired when the Nazis came to power in 1938. With the rise of violent anti-Semitism in Vienna, Segal's parents sent her to England as part of the Kindertransport children's rescue mission. But, while living in a series of foster homes, the ten-year old girl conducted a campaign of such vigorous letter-writing to British authorities that her parents were eventually allowed to join her. Her father, however, died just before the end of the war. Supported by her mother working as a cook, Segal managed to graduate from the University of London, and in 1951 emigrated to the United States. She held a variety of jobs–in a shoe factory, as a receptionist, teaching English–while writing stories that she soon began selling to major magazines. In 1964, to great acclaim, she published Other People's Houses, a novel based on her refugee experience as a child, which had been serialized in the New Yorker. Meanwhile, in 1961, she had married David Segal, who became an editor at Knopf. He died in 1970. For her two children, Segal began to write and translate children's books, including an award-winning collection of Grimm's fairy tales with illustrator Maurice Sendak. She returned to adult fiction in 1976 with her novella Lucinella. Segal has since taught at universities, including Columbia and Princeton, and won numerous writing prizes, including an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her 1985 novel Her First American. Her most recent book, the 2007 story collection Shakespeare's Kitchen, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Lore Segal lives in New York City.