No One Is Here Except All of Us
Page 31
Tremendous thanks to PJ Mark, my agent, for the kind of careful attention, enthusiasm and friendship every writer dreams about. And thanks to Stephanie Koven and Becky Sweren.
To my amazing teachers, especially those who read the first shaky pages of this story. They were kind and encouraging even though I’m sure that that draft made little sense. Truly, I do not know if this novel would exist without them.
My colleagues in the UC Irvine workshop taught me ten thousand good things. Special thanks to Margaux Sanchez, who read many drafts of this book, each time helping me to see the way forward when I thought I might have come to a dead end.
To the magazines and their editors who have believed in my work, in particular One Story for publishing my very first story, which changed everything for me.
Thank you to the International Center for Writing and Translation at UC Irvine and Glenn Schaeffer for support at a crucial time, support that brought this from being almost-something to being a book. Thanks also to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and the Ragdale Foundation.
A Treasury of Jewish Folklore by Nathan Ausubel (probably a distant relative) was full of inspiration. Some stories within it are so fantastic that I hardly wanted to change them at all.
Long ago, members of my family lived in a place called Zalischik, nestled beside the crook of a river in the Carpathian Mountains. That place and the village in this book are not exactly the same, just as some history and parts of the Jewish religion have been reimagined to suit the purposes of this novel.
My parents have never, not once, faltered in their support of my writing. Their faith is overwhelming. And it doesn’t stop there—my sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, stepmother, plus my husband’s family and my terrific, terrific friends—I can’t believe my luck.
Finally, to my husband, Teo, who is everything. Just everything.