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Elizabeth Poliner

Biography

Elizabeth Poliner

Elizabeth Poliner is the author of the novel AS CLOSE TO US AS BREATHING, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in Fiction and was a finalist for the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award in Fiction and the Ribalow Prize. She has also published a poetry collection, What You Know in Your Hands, and a novel-in-stories, MUTUAL LIFE & CASUALTY Her stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Story, and Colorado Review, among other journals. She lives in Virginia.

Elizabeth Poliner

Books by Elizabeth Poliner

Spinning at the Edges
by Elizabeth Poliner - Family Life, Fiction, Jewish Interest, Literary

For much of her adult life Ruth Pearl has lived in the small New England town of Wells, Connecticut, on the shore of Lake Topaqua. Decades back, when she was 14, she and her parents fled German-occupied Amsterdam after the murder of her beloved older sister Sophia, and in the wake of such loss, Ruth has long taken comfort in the natural beauty of her lake view. But in the winter of 2000, Ruth’s neighbor builds an addition to his home that blocks Ruth’s view, a disruption of her peace that sparks fear that her tumultuous past is happening again. One day, seeking solace, Ruth heads out for a cathartic skate on the lake only to spot a boy in the distance falling through the ice. Together, Ruth and Arthur save Ian Lima, a despairing 16-year-old, and over the days to come, as Ruth and Arthur help Ian heal, they find themselves healing too.