Ursula Hegi

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Ursula Hegi (* 23. May 1946 in Dusseldorf as Ursula Koch ) is a German-American author. She is currently teaching the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton .

Life

Hegi grew up in post-war Germany. Back then the war was not talked about and the Holocaust was a taboo. This has a strong influence on her later writing and her German identity.

She left West Germany in 1964 at the age of 18. In 1965 she moved to the USA. There she married in 1967 and took American citizenship that same year . In 1979 she graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor's and master's degree. In 1984 she divorced her husband and was hired as an Associate Professor at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington , near Spokane . She taught creative writing and contemporary literature.

The first two books by Hegi are set in the USA. Only her third book Floating in My Mother's Palm is set in the fictional German town of Burgdorf. She used this setting for three other books, including her bestselling novel Stones from the River , which was accepted into Oprah's Book Club in 1997 . After Hegi appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show , she sold 1.5 million hardbacks and 0.5 million paperbacks. She then moved from Spokane to New York City .

Hegi has received several awards including a NEA Fellowship and five PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. In 1991 she won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) book award for Floating in My Mother's Palm . It was also mentioned twice as the New York Times Notable Book. Many of her books have been reviewed in The New York Times , Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post .

Bibliography (selection)

Novels

  • Intrusions (1981)
  • Floating in My Mother's Palm (1990)
  • Stones from the River (1994)
The other. German by Cornelia Holfelder-von der Tann. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1998 ISBN 978-3-498-02930-2
  • Salt Dancers (1995)
  • The Vision of Emma Blue (2000)
Emma blue. German by Susanne Goga-Klinkenberg. Kiepenheuer and Witsch. Cologne 2002 ISBN 978-3-462-03078-5
  • Sacred Time (2003)
Ordinary sins. German by Susanne Höbel. Kiepenheuer and Witsch. Cologne 2006. ISBN 978-3-462-03684-8
  • The Worst Thing I've Done (2007)
  • Children and Fire (2011)

Short stories

  • Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories (1988)
  • Hotel of the Saints (2001)
Hotel of the saints. German by Susanne Goga-Klinkenberg. Kiepenheuer and Witsch. Cologne 2003. ISBN 978-3-462-03330-4

Children's books

  • Trudi & Pia (2003), with pictures by Gisele Potter

Non-fiction

  • Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America (1998)
Break the silence. About being German in America. German by Susanne Goga-Klinkenberg. Europe publ. Munich, Vienna 1998. ISBN 978-3-203-78005-4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f http://www.spokesmanreview.com/interactive/bookclub/interviews/interview.asp?IntID=8
  2. ^ Cowart, David (2006), Trailing Clouds: Immigrant Fiction in Contemporary America, Cornell University Press, pp. 57-58, 129, ISBN 0-8014-7287-3 .
  3. ↑ a b c d http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Stones-from-the-River/2
personal data
SURNAME Hegi, Ursula
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koch, Ursula (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American author
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf