Israeli expat Shelly Oria talks about her move to New York, her English writing and her Hebrew dreams.
By BETH KISSILEFFShelly Oria(photo credit: KIRA MADDEN)
At a time when Israeli writers living outside the country are winning major literary awards – Reuven Namder just won the prestigious Sapir Prize for his The Ruined House, written in Hebrew; and Ayelet Tsabari the Sami Rohr Prize for her story collection The Best Place on Earth – the phenomenon of expat Israelis writing in English is flourishing.Perhaps after Russian immigrant writers, it will become the next new literary trend? The latest entrant to the genre is Israeli- born, New York-based Shelly Oria’s cleverly titled book of short stories, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0. Despite her late entry into the writing-in-English game – in her 20s, when she came to New York to enroll in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College – Oria has published in some major literary journals like The Paris Review, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and TriQuarterly, and established a career for herself as a fiction writer in English.The stories range from one about a grief counselor to Israelis in New York, to one about an Israeli artist who goes to Albany with the daughter he rarely sees to sell his art in “The Disneyland of Albany” to “Documentation” a story told through the kisses it produces.The Jerusalem Post caught up with her via Skype to ask about writing, life in New York and Israel, and the MFA experience.Many writers who pen their works in Hebrew are yearning to be translated to English. Is there a plan for you to appear in Hebrew? With Keter Publishing House, yes. We sold the rights, and it is being translated now.Will that make you more of a real writer in the minds of those around you? I think with certainty [in the minds of my Israeli family and friends], I became a real writer when the Haaretz story came out on the cover of “Galeria,” the Shabbat supplement.There was a sense of, “Oh, this is for real, she is on the cover of Galeria.”I had people contacting me: my firstgrade teacher, friends I hadn’t talked to in 20 years, people sent my parents flowers.But it was bizarre, I was here [in New York]. No one here knows what Galeria is; they haven’t heard of it. This epitomizes the split of identity from a different angle.I definitely deal with that in my work, but from the opposite perspective. Over the last seven years, my difficulty has been translating my work in the other direction.I had to explain to friends here why Galeria is a big deal, Haaretz is a big deal, etc.Why did you come to the States to get a master of fine arts? There is only one MFA program in Israel, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.Tel Aviv University has a writing program, not an MFA. It is a term no one in Israel knows, to’ar sheni b’ketiva is something the average Israeli does not know.I can say with certainly that the MFA in Israel is not the equivalent of what it is here. MFA programs have shaped the American contemporary literary scene.How and why did you get to this English writing career ? The “how” is definitely due to my experience at Sarah Lawrence.I moved to New York, was working three jobs and took a year to translate a body of work – 10 short stories and a play [from Hebrew to English]. I applied with translated work.I would workshop translated work, but the idea of an MFA is to produce new work. For all the prompts that first semester, I would write in Hebrew and translate.It was a fight to keep up; and I didn’t know the names of writers referenced. I was struggling to keep up.Will you ever go back to writing in Hebrew, now that you’ve done well in English? It would be a dream to go back and forth. I used to write plays in Hebrew, and I miss it.Have you always felt a connection to the US? I was born in the US and was seven weeks old when my parents went back to Israel; technically, I am an American citizen.My mom tells the story that in kindergarten, when we sang the song “Eretz Eretz Eretz” with the line “Eretz ba noladnu,” the land where I was born, I would not say “noladnu,” because it was not okay to lie.I think that exemplifies it: From a young age, I knew I was born in the US; somehow, it was something that was always part of my identity.Does the sense of back-and-forth affect your characters? I definitely think so. Many of my characters exist in that space, trying to negotiate both cultures or languages, that gap in between. It is their struggle at surface level, but a deeper layer of identity struggle is about that.Please talk about the title “New York 1, Tel Aviv 0.”Of course, the most straightforward answer is: It’s a game they play. The reason for the game is because of their connection to Israel, to Israelis. It is an ongoing game. My answer to that, the core of issue, is that it is less about the one and zero, and more about the fact that it is an ongoing game and forever will be – they can’t stop comparing, stop the conversation.The nature of that dialogue will forever be part of my internal dialogue, the way I write and the way I think.Can you talk about the fluidity – of sexuality, language, characters – in your writing? The fluidity of both nationality and sexuality is two ways of capturing, in a way, a similar identity struggle. My best friends here speak Hebrew in my dreams; it happens a lot.I exist in both these languages, and have an unconscious life in both as well.
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