Michele Zackheim

Michele Zackheim is an American writer and visual artist known for her deeply researched historical novels and interdisciplinary projects that blend narrative with visual art. Her work often explores themes of memory, loss, and the hidden lives of historical figures, particularly women, through a lens of meticulous archival investigation. Zackheim's career spans several decades, during which she has received significant fellowships and her books have been published by prestigious houses like Riverhead Books and Counterpoint Press.

Biography

Michele Zackheim was born in 1944 in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She pursued her higher education in California, attending the University of California, Berkeley before earning a master's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her early professional life was diverse, involving work in community mental health and education, which later informed the psychological depth of her writing. She has lived and worked extensively in New York City and Taos, New Mexico, environments that have significantly influenced her artistic perspective. Zackheim has also been a dedicated teacher, serving on the faculty of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and offering workshops internationally.

Literary career

Zackheim's literary career is distinguished by her novelistic explorations of obscure or overlooked historical narratives. Her debut novel, Violette's Embrace (1996), published by Riverhead Books, is a fictionalized account of the life of French writer Violette Leduc, bringing attention to Leduc's tumultuous relationship with Simone de Beauvoir and the Parisian literary scene. This was followed by Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl (1999), a work of creative nonfiction that investigates the fate of Albert Einstein's first child, a project that required extensive research across Europe and involved consultations with the Einstein Papers Project. Her later novel, Last Train to Paris (2016, Counterpoint Press), is a multi-generational story set against the backdrop of World War II and the Cold War, following an American journalist from the Spanish Civil War to the Berlin Wall.

Visual art and interdisciplinary work

Parallel to her writing, Michele Zackheim has maintained a sustained practice as a visual artist, often integrating text and image. She is known for her large-scale narrative installations and artist's books. A major project, "The Phoenix Series," involved creating a suite of paintings and texts responding to the history and mythology of Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. This interdisciplinary approach is central to her methodology, where archival documents, photographs, and personal artifacts often become both source material and physical components of her art, creating a dialogue between historical record and imaginative reconstruction.

Awards and recognition

Throughout her career, Zackheim has received several prestigious awards and fellowships that have supported her research and creative work. These include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and multiple grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also been a resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, one of the oldest and most renowned artist residency programs in the United States. Her book Einstein's Daughter was widely reviewed in major publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, cementing her reputation as a writer capable of transforming rigorous historical inquiry into compelling narrative.

Selected bibliography

* Violette's Embrace (1996, Riverhead Books) * Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl (1999, Riverhead Books) * Last Train to Paris (2016, Counterpoint Press)

Category:American novelists Category:American women novelists Category:1944 births Category:Writers from Los Angeles Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni