Brenda Webster is an American writer, critic and translator. She is the author of five novels, including ''The Beheading Game'' (2006) and ''Vienna Triangle'' (2009), which appeared on bestseller lists in both the

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

and the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

. Her most recent novel, ''After Auschwitz: A Love Story'', published in 2013, is a story of an elderly man dealing with the early stages of dementia as he struggles to hold on to his memories and cope with his changing relationship to his wife. Webster is the current president of ''PEN West''.

Biography

Brenda Webster was born in New York City in 1936, the daughter of abstract expressionist painter

Ethel Schwabacher Ethel Kremer Schwabacher (born May 20, 1903, New York, New York, U.S.— died November 25, 1984, New York, New York, U.S.) was an influential abstract expressionist painter, represented by the Betty Parsons Gallery in the 1950s and 1960s. She ...

and the prominent entertainment lawyer Wolf Schwabacher. Webster's memoir ''The Last Good Freudian'' recounts a privileged childhood that was deeply affected by her family's devotion to Freudian ideology. Webster herself entered psychoanalysis at age 14, but eventually rebelled against what she saw as the patriarchy of orthodox

Freudianism Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) is considered to be the founder of the psychodynamic approach to psychology, which looks to unconscious drives to explain human behavior. Freud believed that the mind is responsible for both c ...

. Webster was educated at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the e ...

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

, and

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, and completed

doctoral studies A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. She has three children and five grandchildren, and splits her time between Berkeley and Rome. Her husband is

Ira M. Lapidus Ira M. Lapidus is an Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History at The University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of ''A History of Islamic Societies'', and ''Contemporary Islamic Movements in Historical Perspective'', ...

, Professor Emeritus of History at the

and author of ''A History of Islamic Societies''.

Writings

Brenda Webster is the author of five novels: ''Sins of the Mothers'', ''Paradise Farm'', ''The Beheading Game'', ''Vienna Triangle'', and ''After Auschwitz: A Love Story''. Her

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

, ''The Last Good Freudian'' was published by Holmes and Meier in 2000. Webster also published a translation with Gabriella Romani of Edith Bruck's

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

novel, ''Lettera alla Madre'' in 2006. ''Vienna Triangle'', published in Fall of 2009, explores

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

's role in the death of a brilliant disciple. Set in the late 1960s, ''Vienna Triangle'' follows Kate, a graduate student in psychology at Columbia, as she meets the famed Freudian theorist

Helene Deutsch Helene Deutsch (; ; 9 October 1884 – 29 March 1982) was a Polish-American psychoanalyst and colleague of Sigmund Freud. She founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1935, she immigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she maintained ...

and learns about both the earliest days of psychoanalysis, and her own family's mysterious past. Webster has also written two critical studies: "Yeats: A Psychoanalytic Study" and "Blake's Prophetic Psychology", which have appeared in several

anthologies In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and ge ...

. She has also translated poetry from the Italian for ''The Other Voice'' and ''The Penguin Book of Women Poets''. She is also the co-editor of ''Hungry for Light: The Journal of Ethel Schwabacher'', and wrote the introduction to the

Signet Classics The New American Library (also known as NAL) is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publis ...

edition of

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English alliterative verse. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot comb ...

. In addition to her novels, translations, and academic books and essays, Webster is a prolific author of fictional short stories. Eleven of these stories were published in the collection ''Tattoo Bird'', published online by FictionNet in 1996, as well as in various journals including ''

Women's Studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...

'', '' The Chariton Review'', ''Caprice'' and other literary publications.

Awards

Brenda Webster has been nominated for two Northern

California Book Awards The California Book Awards are annual literary awards given to California Writers and Publishers since 1931. The event is sponsored by Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California. The California Book Awards are funded by an endowment from Dr. Ma ...

(2007). *Fiction: ''The Beheading Game'' by Brenda Webster. *Translation: ''Letter to My Mother by Edith Bruck'', translated by Brenda Webster. Her short story ''Tattoo Bird'' received an Honorable Mention (second prize) in the H.E. Francis Short Story Competition held by the Ruth Hindman Foundation. It was also twice nominated for a

Pushcart Prize The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are ...

References

External links

Works by Brenda Webster at Open Library.org
* http://www.brendawebster.com/ * https://web.archive.org/web/20130721234751/http://redroom.com/member/brenda-webster {{DEFAULTSORT:Webster, Brenda 21st-century American novelists American women novelists Living people Analysands of Kurt Eissler 1936 births 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American translators Memoirists from New York (state)