Terri Hanauer, Writer

When I began writing in 2019, I didn’t know what I was going to write. I started with short exercises – 2 pages at a time – given by my teacher, Jack Grapes. Those two pages grew into two more and then two more and then many, many more and then countless revisions more until I completed my debut novel, “The Lightness of Rain.”

I also didn’t know that I actually liked poetry, especially if it was written by Dorianne Laux and Charles Bukowski. So I began writing poetry.

Writing, I’ve since discovered, is everything.

It’s the culmination of the arts I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in professionally – acting, photography and directing. When I write, I create characters (acting), pictures (photography), and stories (theatre) with language. In my case, English with a little French and Yiddish thrown in.

My father always told us stories at the kitchen table – about what happened at the meat packing factory, or on the streetcar coming home, or at Uncle Jack’s during a game of 7 Card Rummy. My sisters and I would eat our mother’s formidable goulash and listen, totally entranced. That was our campfire.

My poems have been published in Cultural Weekly, Beyond Words Magazine, Cathexis, Prometheus Dreaming, Tiny Seed Journal and Ariel Publishing, LLC.

Two short stories – “Blue Suede Shoes” and “The Cat” – were published in Side-Eye Anthology and On The Bus.