Method & evidence
Judge the published work first.
The strongest proof that I can write is the work that editors already chose. The family-history method sits underneath it: the same refusal to invent, the same attention to voice, the same willingness to leave a gap visible when the record ends.
The three pieces that carry the most weight
Minyan Magazine · Pushcart Prize nominee. A Jewish family, an illness, a pharmacist brother. The closest public example of the family-history voice.
The Missouri Review · top ten, Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Literary range, structure, grief, the body, and the discipline of not simplifying what is hard.
Chicken Soup for the Soul. Shorter, more accessible register. What stops counting as a crisis after the worst thing has already happened.
In the published anthology; listed on the Writing page.
The method, stated plainly
Where the record ends, the writing says so.
Every commissioned history is built from interviews, family papers, photographs and the living memory that remains. I do not average contradictory accounts. I do not quietly prefer the more dramatic version. I write what is established, mark what is contested, and say what nobody now knows.
That ledger is part of the finished work. A history with honest gaps is worth more than a smooth story that fills them in. Families always know the difference when they read it.
The family narrative is written by me — not generated, drafted or paraphrased by AI. The finished file is print-ready PDF and Word. Ownership stays with the family or the commissioning body.
A short family-history excerpt
From a history of Mina Kornfeld
The longer public sample that previously lived on this page has been set aside. What remains is a brief illustration of voice and the handling of incomplete record — not the primary evidence of the work. For that, read the published pieces above.
Vienna, 1918. She becomes a nurse because it is the only thing that makes sense — to clean, to carry, to stitch. A telegram reaches her in a supply closet that smells of dust and old cotton: her parents murdered in their sleep, the house burned. She allows herself ninety seconds. Then she folds the paper twice, puts it in her apron pocket, and goes back to work.
Hamburg, 1920. The ship to Ellis Island leaves without her, carrying brothers and cousins toward America’s bright noise, while she stays on the dock with a sister too ill to sail. A sailor tells her there is one to Halifax tomorrow. Not America, but not here. She takes it.
The full method table — Established / Contested / Unknown — travels with every finished history. That is the standard the work is held to.