FORA.tv Speaker - Louise Steinman

Louise Steinman is a writer and literary curator. Her work frequently deals with memory, history and reconciliation.

Her book, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War was cited as "A graceful, understated memoir that draws its strength from the complexities it explores." (New York Times Book Review).

The book won the 2002 Gold Medal in Autobiography/Memoir from ForeWord Magazine and has been the selection of several all-city and all-freshman reading programs. The book chronicles her quest to return a war souvenir to its owner and -- in the process -- illuminates how war changed one generation and shaped another.

Her first book, The Knowing Body: The Artist As Storyteller in Contemporary Performance was hailed by the L.A. Times as a "dazzling study of the performing arts." It is based on two decades of Steinman's experience as a performer/director with So&So&So&So interdisciplinary theater troupe, and as a dance/theater critic for publications ranging from Willamette Week to High Performance, Oakland Tribune and others.

She is currently completing a book titled Through the Crooked Mirror: My Conversation with Poland.

Her essays and feature articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, New York Times Syndicate, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Salon.com, Washington Post and other publications. Her features include profiles of Zen rabbis, elevator operators, artists, memoirists, combat veterans, translators, filmmakers, and an innovator in deaf education.

She has curated the award-winning ALOUD at Central Library series for the Los Angeles Public Library for the past fifteen years and is also co-director of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities at USC. She was Senior Creative Advisor for the Sundance Institute Arts Writing Program and she is an active member of PEN Center USA West.