Yid Lit: Carmela Ciuraru
For as long as there have been authors, there have been secret identities — pseudonyms — used by writers to unlock creativity, hide identity, or simply to become someone else. Carmela Ciuraru became interested in the literary pseudonym and recently published a book on the topic, “Nom de Plume.”
In it, she profiles famous and infamous writers like Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll. Romain Gary chose that name to escape a Russian Yiddish one, and the Brontë sisters wrote as the Bell brothers so that their work would be read, not as women’s, but on its own terms.
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