Lore Segal

Lore Segal (née Groszmann; March 8, 1928 – October 7, 2024) was an Austrian-American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. She was the author of five novels, and was known for her autobiographical fiction, drawing on her life as an Austrian Jewish refugee who fled to the United Kingdom as a child, growing up in England before settling in the United States. Her fourth novel, Shakespeare's Kitchen, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

Early life An only child, Lore Groszmann was born on March 8, 1928, in Vienna, Austria, into a middle-class Jewish family. Her father, Ignatz, was a chief bank accountant, and her mother, Franziska, was a housewife.

When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, Groszmann's father found himself jobless and threatened. He listed the family on the American immigration quota, and in December that year Lore Segal joined other Jewish children on the first wave of the Kindertransport rescue mission, seeking safety in England.

While with her English foster parents, she found a purple notebook and started writing, filling its 36 pages with German prose. It was the beginning of a novel she would eventually write in English, Other People's Houses. Lore Groszmann and her mother then moved to London, where she attended the Bedford College for Women at the University of London on a scholarship. She graduated in 1948 with an honours degree in English literature.

In 1951, after spending three years in the Dominican Republic with her mother, waiting for their US entry permit to arrive, they moved to Washington Heights, New York City, where they shared a two-room apartment with her grandmother and uncle.

Segal published her first novel, Other People's Houses, in 1964 to widespread acclaim. She received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for the novel. Her novels often deal with the process of assimilation, from a refugee arriving in a new country which must become her home (as in Her First American), to a flighty poet finding her footing in a constantly moving literary world (as in Lucinella).

Personal life and death Segal and her husband, David, were married for nine years, until his death from a heart attack in 1970, aged 42. They had two children.

Segal lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Shakespeare's Kitchen, 2008) PEN/ O. Henry Prize Story, ("Making Good," 2008) Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006 Best American Short Stories, ("The Reverse Bug," ) The O. Henry Awards Prize Story, ("The Reverse Bug," 1990) University of Illinois, Senior University Scholar, 1987–1990 National Endowment for the Arts, Grant in Fiction, 1987–1988 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, 1986 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction, 1985 Artists Grant, The Illinois Arts Council, 1985 Grawemeyer Award for Faculty, University of Louisville, 1983 National Endowment for the Humanities, Grant in Translation, 1982 National Endowment for the Arts, Grant for Fiction, 1972–1973 Creative Artists Public Service Program of New York State, 1972–1973 American Library Association Notable Book selection (Tell Me a Mitzi, 1970) National Council on the Arts and Humanities Grant, 1967–1968 Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965–1966