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Marisa Silver (born April 23, 1960) is an American author, screenwriter and film director.


Film work

Silver enrolled at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
and majored in Visual Studies. After assisting documentary filmmaker and
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
faculty member, Ricky Leacock, in the making of a film about the artist Maud Morgan, she dropped out of college and followed Leacock to a job at
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
. Following her experience working on documentary films, Silver wrote a screenplay for her first feature-length fiction film, '' Old Enough'', which was produced by her sister, Dina Silver. The film won the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic at the
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...
in 1984, when she was 23. She went on to direct three more feature films: '' Permanent Record'' (1988), with
Keanu Reeves Keanu Charles Reeves ( ; born September 2, 1964) is a Canadian actor and musician. The recipient of numerous accolades in a career on screen spanning four decades, he is known for his leading roles in action films, his amiable public imag ...
; ''
Vital Signs Vital signs (also known as vitals) are a group of the four to six most crucial medical signs that indicate the status of the body's vital (life-sustaining) functions. These measurements are taken to help assess the general physical health of ...
'' (1990) with
Diane Lane Diane Lane (born January 22, 1965) is an American actress. Her accolades include nominations for an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. Lane made her film debut in George Roy Hill's 1979 film '' A Littl ...
and
Jimmy Smits Jimmy L. Smits (born July 9, 1955) is an American actor. He is best known for playing attorney Victor Sifuentes on the legal drama ''L.A. Law'', NYPD Detective Bobby Simone on the police drama ''NYPD Blue'', and Matt Santos on the political dr ...
; and '' He Said, She Said'' (1991), with
Kevin Bacon Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor. Known for various roles, including leading man characters, Bacon has received numerous accolades such as a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Bacon made his featu ...
and Elizabeth Perkins. The latter was co-directed with her husband-to-be, Ken Kwapis.


Literary work

After making her career in Hollywood, she switched her profession and entered graduate school to become a short story writer. Explaining her change in media, she said "I felt very strongly that the stories I was telling weren't the stories I wanted to tell, that what interested mehuman behavior, the nuance of character, the life that exists in shadows and momentswas not, for the most part, the stuff of film. I knew I wanted to tell stories but I had a very profound realization that I was working in the wrong medium." Her first short story appeared in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' magazine in 2000 and subsequently several more stories have been published there. For graduate school, Silver attended a low-residency program at
Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a required course of study, work an on-campus j ...
, where she would later teach. She studied with Antonya Nelson, Robert Boswell, and Geoffrey Wolff. Silver said of her teachers, "More than anything, they taught me how to read like a writer, how to understand how craft is used in others work and so begin to see how I might apply it in my own work. I think it’s pretty hard to teach a person how to write, but you can teach them how to read." Silver published the short-story collection, '' Babe in Paradise'', in 2001. That collection was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a ''
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 ...
'' Best Book of the Year. A story from the collection was included in '' The Best American Short Stories 2001''. In 2005, W. W. Norton & Company published Silver's novel, ''No Direction Home''. Her novel '' The God of War'' was published in April 2008 by
Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...
. Her second short-story collection, ''Alone with You'', was published in 2010, and her third novel, ''Mary Coin'', in 2013. The latter is a meditation on
Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange' ...
's iconic photograph '' Migrant Mother'' (1936). Her novel ''Little Nothing'' was released September 13, 2016. She was a visiting Senior Lecturer at the Otis College Graduate Writing Program in 2017 and also on the fiction faculty at
Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a required course of study, work an on-campus j ...
. She was awarded the 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Fiction. The
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...
selected Silver as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. During her residency there from 2018 to 2019, she performed research for the novel, ''The Mysteries'', which was subsequently published by
Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...
on May 4, 2021. In its "New & Noteworthy" feature, the
New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
describes ''The Mysteries'', "Family and friendship are the central mysteries of Silver's latest novel, which is set against the tumult of the early 1970s and features a fraught bond between young girls."


Personal life

Silver was born in
Shaker Heights Shaker or Shakers may refer to: Religious groups * Shakers, a historically significant Christian sect * Indian Shakers, a smaller Christian denomination Objects and instruments * Shaker (musical instrument), an indirect struck idiophone * Cockta ...
,
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
, to Raphael Silver, a film director and producer, and
Joan Micklin Silver Joan Micklin Silver (May 24, 1935 – December 31, 2020) was an American director of films and plays. Born in Omaha, Silver moved to New York City in 1967 where she began writing and directing films. She is best known for her debut film Hester S ...
, a director. She and Kwapis have two sons. They reside in Los Angeles.


References


External links

* *
Marisa Silver's FilmographyReview of ''The God of War''
by Rodger Jacobs at PopMatters.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Silver, Marisa 1960 births Living people American women short story writers Harvard University alumni Jewish American screenwriters Jewish American short story writers Jewish women writers Writers from Shaker Heights, Ohio American women film directors Film directors from Ohio Sundance Film Festival award winners 21st-century American women