Author and AWG member Jennifer Steil spoke to a packed room at MEL on Thursday November 21, 2024. The ostensible purpose of the talk was to discuss her 2020 novel, Exile Music, but thanks to the many questions of attendees, the discussion ranged over her whole writing career and life in general.
Jennifer began by explaining that Exile Music follows the structure of Mahler’s 3rd symphony: the divisions of the book mirror that musical structure. The book begins with the Overture, which Jennifer read to us. It evokes in brief, through the protagonist’s memories, the Austrian phase of Orly’s existence. The following part explores that existence in a narrative that traces the family’s ever dwindling security until they manage to leave for Bolivia.
Jennifer said that she was anxious to move from the Austrian setting to the Bolivian one. The Jewish experience in Austria part had already been dealt with in novels. She wanted to give a sense of how difficult it was for Jewish families to get out. Financially, the Nazis created impossible situation, first they confiscated the Jewish inhabitants' money and then made t pay to leave. In the novel, it took a while for the comfortably installed family to realise they had to get out.
In answer to the question of why the novel’s central character is a child, Jennifer explained how she got the idea for book. First of all she and her family moved to Bolivia in 2012. They were there for her husband’s job. He was the European Union Ambassador to Bolivia. One day he asked whether she knew that about 20,000 Jewish refugees emigrated to Bolivia during WWII. This was something Jennifer hadn’t heard about. Because she was finding it a challenge to adapt to th climate and geography of La Paz, she wondered how they adapted in exile. There were no novels about this dimension of the Holocaust. There was a memoir by Leo Spitzer, whose family fle from Austria to Bolivia in 1939. Leo lived there 10 years until the family migrated to the USA. There were also memoirs written by mining engineers that gave useful details about everyday life, such as the food and the housing.
The second inspiration came from her daughter who was almost three when they moved. She asked “Where did I live before Bolivia?” Jennifer listed Yemen, Jordan and England. Then Theo asked, “Where did I live before that?” Jennifer replied that it was in Mummy’s tummy. And Theo came back with, “But where before that?” “Nowhere,” was not an answer that satisfied her. Sh declared that she lived in BunnyBeltz. And her original mother was the bunny queen. For the next seven years she created that land, making maps and inventing international relations with other imaginary countries. When Jennifer said that she couldn’t wait to visit she was told, “You don’t have the right visa.” So reflecting on how her daughter made up this imaginary world, Jennife thought that she would need an imaginary world as an escape if she had lived in Austria during the rise of Nazism. And it would be interesting for the novel if there was another person to invent the world. Thus Anneliese was born.
The next question was personal. “How did you become a writer?” Jennifer replied that it was not a straight path. Her existence has been marked by spontaneous decisions. First she was a theatre major at college; then she was a professional actor in Seattle. After a while she became frustrated with the roles available for her, either ingenue or prostitute with a heart of gold. She wanted something challenging or different. One day she saw a flyer offering a writing workshop. The teacher seemed competent but the course was pricey. Then th teacher offered to accept only 5 dollars a week since she couldn’t afford more. After finding she liked writing, she enrolled in the MFA at Sarah Lawrence in New York. But as a writer, she was still not able to earn enough to live. Then she thought that journalists get a pay check for writing. She would just need to learn how to report. To her surprise, Columbia admitted her to their journalism program. Her first byline was an article in Time magazine ..She wrote for newspapers and tmagazines. As a newspaper reporter, she felt she had no life. People had pagers at the time and at any time of day or night, the pager would beep. Sometimes it was the police inviting her to report a crime. She moved to magazine writing so that she could continue doing theatre in the evenings.
Most of her jobs she seemed to have been found at cocktail parties. One day an ex-boyfriend from high school asked if she’d like to train journalists in Yemen. She was’t ready to commit for a long stint, but offered to go there for three weeks. She stayed for four years. She arrived in 200 never having trained journalists before, let alone those from a different culture. Her friends wer afraid she was entering a danger zone, but it turned out to be her best decision ever. She found the Yemeni newspaper men and women hospitable, eager, bright and hard-working. And they found her advice useful. No one offered training like she did in Yemen. They wanted her to stay The paper was in English but she wanted to learn Arabic in order to get around. She lived alone and learned a lot of the language from taxi drivers, who were keen to talk. She kept a journal and soon had 1200 pages of notes. She wrote a book proposal about her experience and sent it to a friend who shared it with his agent. The agent then rang her in Yemen to ask if she could represent the book. The Woman Who Fell from the Sky sold in a week for more than she’s made in her life.
Next she was asked what made her proposal so enticing for the American publisher. Jennifer replied that no one had had this experience. Americans didn’t go to Yemen. The American diplomats posted there were often confined to their compound and couldn’t walk about freely a she did. Then she was asked if she wore a hijab. She answered that initially she dressed as the other women did until they told her that as a non-Muslim, she wasn’t expected to wear the hijab. Out of respect though, she covered her body and pinned up her very long hair. She found it relaxing not to have to think of what to wear.
Wasn’t it a problem to move freely as a single woman? Not really, because she was not Muslim. She was a foreigner. An honorary male. She was treated like movie star, an honoured guest. She could go to all-male or all-female gatherings. It took some time for her to learn how to identify her female colleagues because they were covered except for their eyes. But she learned to make the difference, taking into account their way of walking and their shoes. The Yemeni women went ou in pairs. They wouldn’t take taxi alone with a man.
Her next book was The Ambassador’s Wife. Like the protagonist of that book, she was kidnapped. The audience wanted to know all about her experience as a hostage. It happened when she was out hiking with a group of women and she was six and a half months pregnant. As they were having a picnic she heard shouting. When she looked up she saw an AK47 pointed at her. There was one bodyguard with her. She started backing away but the bodyguard told her to go back and talk to Sheik who was holding the gun. So she greeted him with “Salaam aleikum.” When he didn’t reply “Aleikum salaam,” she got worried. That had never happened to her. The man looked right through her as if she were not there or not human. She realised he could kill her easily. She called her husband Tim with a phone borrowed phone from one of the women. Thank goodness, he answered. He managed to get help: British bodyguards, soldiers, even the Minister of the Interior. The Sheik asked for cement. She was released, but she started having contractions from the stress of the moment. The other women were calm and protective of her. She managed to calm herself with yoga breathing.
Those who had read Exile Music were curious to know about her familiarity with music. Jennifer said that she doesn’t have a musical background (although she did do 3 years of piano and violin). The book needed five years of research, including consultation with musicians, includin people in Bolivia, and research into the archives of the Vienna Philharmonic, which she called “a criminal organisation” due to its failure to protect Jewish musicians and its acceptance of Nazi party members in its ranks.
We discussed the way there’s a sense of urgency in the historical incidents prefacing the chapters in the Austrian section. Then there’s a reprieve when Orly arrives in Bolivia and learns a new culture and adapts to a new place. It’s a period of observation. This is an era of relative peace in spite of the war in Europe. Then there’s a return to the boldface historical passages which give a sense of acceleration as the arc of history impacts the characters directly once again in the aftermath of the war. Broken survivors arrive with tales of horror and Nazi criminals find refuge i Bolivia.
We discussed how the three family members adapt in different ways. Jennifer admitted to he interest in resilience. How do some people adapt to upheaval and others fail? Watching her daughter adapt to Bolivia was exciting. Within weeks she was making friends and speaking Spanish (like Orly). Orly’s father uses music to connect while in exile. He teaches students from the immigrant community and the native one, and learns about Bolivian forms of music. Orly picks up a Bolivian instrument and learns it. So music is a measure of the characters’ adaptation. Orly’s mother stops singing after leaving Europe, partly because her world has been shattered, especially with the loss of her son, and partly because her instrument is her voice. Singing at 12000 feet not easy because of the lower oxygen level. Also, one needs joy in to be able to sing. Joy opens the vocal chords.
Audience members were curious about where and how Jennifer did her research for the book. She explained that she began writing in Bolivia and the writing extended into further years. There were no digital archives about the Bolivian experience. She had to find people to talk to in person She met a man called Guillermo, who came to Bolivia at age eight. He learned Spanish from the landlady’s children. He rejected Austria, changing his name from Wilhelm. He refused to return to Europe. He learned English from old issues of Time magazine.
Another important resource was the Holocaust Museum in London. And of course she had to go to Vienna. She wanted to be able to map Orly’s house and the shops and the synagogue in the neighbourhood. She explored the city and took photographs. She went on a tour of Leopoldstat. Also Vienna has good archives. She wrote and conducted research simultaneously. Indeed, she did much more research than she could use about Kristallnacht, the Anschluss and the Carnival scene. She met a woman who had done a dissertation on the carnival who was kind enough to send her thesis and photos from that era. Jennifer researched the history of Viennese opera so that every opera performance in the novel took place on the date it was actually performed. She saw the golden ladies of the opera house.
She traveled to Genoa to see what the characters’ last view of Europe would be. She needed to look back and see what they saw. She took a Jewish tour of Genoa organised by a group called Milk and Honey. In the current climate the tour was conducted secretly and there were safety precautions. She saw the hiding places that the refugees were offered when waiting for thei ships. As well as researching classical music, she found out about the popular music of Vienna before the war. She found a band that played only songs from 20s and 30s. She also researched the literature available to children and adult readers during that period. The Fifteen Rabbits book that’s so important to Orly is an actual book and it really was banned by the Nazis. The books lent to Orly in Bolivia are also among the works she found. Clearly, Jennifer’s journalism background helped in all this. She knows how to do research.
Her goal in writing the book was to recapture a lost experience. She could have chosen to write non-fiction but she felt that to create a story that would move people, she needed to make i detailed enough. Survivors had only fragmentary recall of their past. She felt the responsibility to represent the era in as richly as possible. And she felt she had succeeded when two weeks after book came, out a 90 year old from Florida e-mailed her and said the novel was just like his life.
There were questions about the projects that follow Exile Music. So Jennifer spoke about her choice of pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing. She took this on because she craves community. She didn’t realise that the academic community in the UK can be lonely for a doctoral student. The work is independent. However, she had a great supervisor, a Czech man who is living between cultures like her. For her dissertation she needed an idea for new novel. She opted for another Bolivia book, The Underside. She was moved by the fact that in that country, gay and lesbian people are often evicted from home by their families. She discovered that there was a community living in caves. Even now homosexuality is legal but not accepted. She wanted to imagine what it would be like to live in a community underground. She researched the experience of literally living underground. Also she looked into underground organisations. She had to analyse her work for the dissertation and she wrote about re-gendering the underworld as well as colonial politics (subaltern people recolonising mining tunnels). She also had to reflect on her own positio and the question of what right she has to tackle the subject.
The conversation turned to the politics of publishing in the USA. The Underside is hard to sell right now. Even more so after the US elections. Her friend’s agent explained that no one wants to think about anything serious in the current climate. The publishing industry is censoring itself. The MEL audience was surprised to hear that, agreeing among themselves that what gives comfort is not airport trash, but beautifully written books (like Exile Music) that tackle serious subjects.
There is also the question of writing about another ethnic type. The publishers questioned whether she should write about Bolivia. Curiously, there was no such objection to Exile Music, which treats the Jewish diaspora. In fact, 90 percent of her author presentations of the book were to Jewish audiences. Jennifer is also a member of Jewish book council even though she is not Jewish. She has not been challenged on identity politics for that book. She did careful research and sought out readers to judge the book’s authenticity. The current project is a historical novel set in Uzbekistan. It recounts the experience of an artist growing up there when Uzbekistan was under Soviet rule. Since it’s a historical novel, she thinks she will not encounter the same kind of resistance. Historical fiction writers have an easier tim with identity politics.
A question followed about Jennifer’s writing process. How does she structure her day? She answered that she always write first thing when she wakes up. Once she starts engaging wit others her mind gets pushed in different directions. There were times when she got up at 5 a.m. t write so she could be available when her daughter woke up. Sometimes her husband got up with their daughter. After lunch she gets back to work, but not after dinner (except to work on other people’s stuff). She confessed that she never feels like getting into her chair to write. The magi happens once she starts.
Jennifer also shared that she has been in cancer treatment. There are times when she really doesn’t feel like writing. But she can’t think of what else to do. And it helps her survive. She writes a weekly newsletter on Substack called Liminal. She enjoys writing there about living in-between —in-between, languages and cultures, between health and sickness. Writing has become a necessary part of her days. She would feel clogged if she didn’t write. It’s as if there’s a traffic j in her body. She doesn’t know what she’s thinking about a subject until she begins to write. A fellow writer in the audience liked the lesson from Exile Music about writing poetry where the teacher asks Orly to think of two things that don’t connect and then connect them. Finding connections brings great satisfaction.
As the time allowed for discussion came to an end, one of the attendees remarked that Jennifer seems to emanate joy in presenting her work. Does the act of writing give joy? She answered that it does but also there are times when she doesn’t want to write about things but has to. Things she needs to think about. She declared that she has great appreciation for ordinary days. Like the hike she took with her family where she basked in the quality of light at the golden hour. She find joy in France, the kindness of the people in her village, the glow of the leaves in the vineyards, the mountains, and the medieval village where she lives
