Winner of the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction

Chosen as a Kirkus Best Book of 2018

For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors winner of Iowa Prize for Nonfiction

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Laura Esther Wolfson’s literary debut draws on years of immersion in the Russian and French languages; struggles to gain a basic understanding of Judaism, its history, and her place in it; and her search for a form to hold the stories that emerge from what she has lived, observed, overheard, and misremembered.

In “Proust at Rush Hour,” when her lungs begin to collapse and fail, forcing her to give up an exciting and precarious existence as a globetrotting simultaneous interpreter, she seeks consolation by reading Proust in the original while commuting by subway to a desk job that requires no more than a minimal knowledge of French. In “For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors” she gives away her diaphragm and tubes of spermicidal jelly to a woman in the Soviet Union who, with two unwanted pregnancies behind her, needs them more than she does. “The Husband Method” has her translating a book on Russian obscenities and gulag slang during the dissolution of her marriage to the Russian-speaker who taught her much of what she knows about that language.

In prose spangled with pathos and dusted with humor, Wolfson transports us to Paris, the Republic of Georgia, upstate New York, the Upper West Side, and the corridors of the United Nations, telling stories that skewer, transform, and inspire.

Reviews

“Laura Esther Wolfson’s first collection is one of the most accomplished and inviting debuts of a personal essayist in years. She has translated, in effect, her psyche and those she encounters with rueful honesty for our reading pleasure. I found it a real page-turner.”—Phillip Lopate, author, Against Joie de Vivre 

“A woman sits musing on all she has lived through—her two marriages, her lifelong desire to write, her relation to the Russian language, the lung disease that is slowly overpowering her. Searching for the right distance from which to make large sense of it all, she adopts a tone of voice that is richly reflective of all that has gone before. This voice lives on in the reader’s mind long after the last page of For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors—an unusually stirring memoir—has been turned.”—Vivian Gornick, author, Fierce Attachments

“Set variously in America, France, and the former Soviet Union, these interlinked stories have a certain magic about them. They speak of loss and disappointment, of foiled ambitions and failed marriages. And yet there is something uplifting about them—owing no doubt to the author’s reserves of talent and wisdom.”—Daphne Merkin, author, The Fame Lunches

“This book is about many things: love, language, love of language, the meaning of home and country and family. Mostly, though, it’s about the subtle, perennial tensions between the lives we think we want and the lives we actually make. For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors is poignant, sophisticated, and as soulful as it is brainy. I admire it immensely.”—Meghan Daum, judge, Iowa Prize for Lit

“This is a marvelous collection. What lifts it so far above the usual offerings is something I can only call soulfulness. Wolfson’s prose is like strong Russian tea; it has a depth of flavor that only a long, devoted steeping in life and literature can produce.”—Emily Fox Gordon, author, Mockingbird Years

 

The year 2018 also saw the release of Perder el Nobel, a Spanish translation of Laura’s essay, “Losing the Nobel.”

Perder el Nobel was published in book form by Gris Tormenta, a boutique publisher headquartered in Querétaro, Mexico. The book was launched at La Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara.

The publisher describes the work as “…a story about the power of Russian literature, the practice of the translator and the meaning of loss,” adding, “It is also a fine introduction to the works of [Belarusian author] Svetlana Alexievich, 2015 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature.”

“Losing the Nobel”/Perder el Nobel was translated into Spanish by Marta Rebón. Rebón, who also translates into Catalan, has been widely recognized in Spain for her translations of Dr. Zhivago (Boris Pasternak), Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman), The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov), and other major works of Russian literature. She has also translated several books by Svetlana Alexievich, who figures significantly in “Losing the Nobel”/Perder El Nobel.

Perder el Nobel is the first in a series from Gris Tormenta entitled “Colección: Editor,” consisting of first-person accounts of aspects of writing and publishing that occur behind the scenes, as a book is making its way from writer to readers.

Spanish-speakers will find an engaging news account of the publication here.

To purchase a copy of Perder el Nobel and to learn more about Gris Tormenta, please visit their web site.

 Anthologies

  • Crossing Borders, Stories and Essays About Translation, ed. Lynn Sharon Schwartz, Seven Stories Press, contains work by Joyce Carol Oates, Primo Levi, Lydia Davis and many others, as well as Laura’s “In Love With Russian” (aka “The Husband Method”). Order the book here.

  • The winners of the 2017 Notting Hill Essay Prize, are contained in a volume entitled Five Ways of Being a Painting and Other Essays (Notting Hill Editions).

  • Congratulations to First Prize Winner William Max Nelson and the other winners. The award ceremony for the Notting Hill Essay Prize included a discussion moderated by two of the judges, with five of the six winners participating. It can be viewed here. The book, which contains Laura’s essay “Losing the Nobel,” can be purchased at New York Review Books or Penguin Random House.

  • The essay “For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors,” originally published in Superstition Review, has been translated into Swedish and published in volume 2 of Gränslös: roliga, allvarliga och annorlunda berättelser om resor (which means Without Borders: Comical, Serious and Off-the-Wall Tales of Travel), an anthology of literary travel writing.

Literary Journals

Guest posts on writing: