Meet the Memoir Writers

The Harrison Public Library and the JCC of Harrison have partnered for a special author event. In honor of Women’s History Month, authors Camilla Calhoun, Marlena Maduro Baraf and Susan Rudnick will discuss their memoirs about the resilient women in their lives who have made them stronger and wiser. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion. The Village Bookstore of Pleasantville will be on site at the JCC of Harrison for anyone who wishes to purchase copies of the books.

Please register on the Harrison Public Library’s website or by phoning the library at (914)-835-0324. Free parking is available at the JCC.

About the Authors

Marlena Maduro Baraf’s story begins in the slender isthmus of Panama in the l950s and l960s and traces the impact of a mother’s mental illness on her young daughter against the backdrop of a colorful, Jewish family deeply assimilated in Catholic Panama. There’s tragedy as well as beauty in this protected world, and Marlena pulls away —crossing borders—to begin a life in the United States very different from the one she has known. The center of the story radiates the pain of a mother’s presence, sucking all the air out of the room and sometimes bringing in so much splash and sparkle. The coming of age memoir examines the bond between mothers and daughters, the importance of community, and beauty of a large Latin American family. It also explores the tension and riches of living a life in between cultures. Marlena’s essays and other work have been published in Ms. Magazine, Lillith, Lumina, Sweet, HuffPost, and others. In past lives the author was book editor at Harper & Row and McGraw-Hill books companies. She studied creative writing at the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute.

During her four years at her friend’s Tuscan villa, Camilla Calhoun harvested grapes and olives, sowed wheat, fell in love, got married, ran a flower shop in Florence and had her first child. Her memoir, The White Moth, is an intimate look at the changing roles and relationships of three generations of women who marry into the Rafanelli family. Through interconnected stories, it explores the importance of place, the tender relationship between women and their evolving roles and status. It also is the story of a shifting patriarchy and challenges the often maligned role of a mother-in-law. In 2016 Camilla wrote a collection of essays dealing with the loss of her beloved husband, Aldo. She is currently working on a novel about the response of a married couple whose only daughter falls from Breakneck Ridge and is left in a coma. The dual timeline story, about a geologist and a botanist, takes place partly in the Hudson Valley in 2003 and in Gubbio, Italy, where the couple met in the 1980s.

For over forty years Susan Rudnick, LCSW, has been listening to people tell their stories in her Manhattan practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. In Edna’s Gift: How My Broken Sister Taught Me to Be Whole, she tells hers. The seed for her memoir was “Coming Home to Wholeness,” a chapter she contributed to Into the Mountain Stream, a book of personal reflections on psychotherapy and Buddhist Experience. She has also written a personal account of her medical condition, which appeared last year in the New York Times — “The Power of a Name: My Secret Life with M.R.K.H.”.  Susan, a Zen practitioner, has published haikus as well as articles about psychotherapy in professional journals. Culled from thousands of submissions, one of her haikus appears in New York City Haiku by Readers of The New York Times.

Contact: Giovanna Fiorino-Iannace