Two Memoirs: Zack Rogow and Claudia Marseille

Join painter Claudia Marseille and poet Zack Rogow in conversation on their new memoirs, But You Look So Normal and Hugging My Father’s Ghost. In their writings, Marseille and Rogow navigate complex topics of familial trauma, loss, coming-of-age, and resilience with tenderness, honesty, and humor. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

About the Books

But You Look So Normal

Claudia Marseille was nearly four years old and had hardly uttered a word. Her German parents, a disturbed psychoanalyst father, and Jewish mother, survivor of the Holocaust, immigrated to America after WWII and were adjusting to new lives and being new parents. Finally they had her tested and discovered her severe hearing loss.

Often isolated and lonely, Claudia didn’t entirely fit into the hearing world, nor into the Deaf culture. In this inspiring and moving memoir, Claudia Marseille weaves family history into a compelling account of growing up and living with an invisible disability—of emerging from silence to finding her voice, and from feeling isolated and ashamed to connected and empowered.

Holding My Father’s Ghost

In Holding My Father’s Ghost, Zack Rogow tries to solve the mystery of the father he never knew. Lee Rogow was a widely published fiction writer, drama critic for the Hollywood Reporter, glamorous man-about-town in Manhattan of the 1950s, captain of a submarine-chaser in World War II—and he died tragically in a plane crash when his son Zack was only three years old.

In Hugging My Father’s Ghost, Zack delves into his father’s unpublished work and unearths treasures. The memoir intersperses Zack’s father’s writings, Zack’s reflections on his parents and the Greatest Generation, and imaginary conversations between his father and himself. The book blends laugh-out-loud humor with sharp pathos, while dealing with the pressures on immigrant families and how those impacted the fates of his parents.

About the Authors

After earning master’s degrees in archaeology and in public policy, and finally an MFA, developed a career in photography and painting, a profession compatible with hearing loss. She ran a fine art portrait photography studio for fifteen years before becoming a full-time painter; her paintings are now represented by the Seager Gray gallery in Mill Valley, California. In her free time Claudia loves to read, watch movies, travel, spend time with friends, attend concerts and art exhibits, and play classical piano. She and her husband live in Oakland, California, and have one grown daughter. Learn more about her art at www.claudiamarseille.com and more about her writing at claudiamarseilleauthor.com.

is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books and works for the theater. His play Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and ran in London, Indonesia, Catalonia, San Francisco, and Portland. His honors include the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize; the Lili Fabilli-Eric Hoffer Essay Prize from University of California, Berkeley; and the Celestine Award for Poetry from Holy Names University. Rogow’s blog, Advice for Writers, features more than 275 posts. His literary translations from French include works by Colette, George Sand, André Breton, and Marcel Pagnol.

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute