Book Talk: Kiss the Red Stairs with Marsha Lederman
- Date
- April 26, 2022
- Time
- 12:30 PM EDT - 1:00 PM EDT
- Location
- Online via Zoom
- Contact
- Laura Greflund, Alumni and Development Officer, Events; laura.greflund@torontomu.ca
Host
Alumni Relations
Description
Join us for a book talk featuring award-winning journalist Marsha Lederman’s (RTA ’88) compelling memoir, Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed (external link) . In this memoir, Lederman delves into her parents’ Holocaust stories in the wake of her own divorce, investigating how trauma migrates through generations with empathy, humour, and resilience.
In this book talk, Marsha sits down with professor Ruth Panofsky to discuss Kiss the Red Stairs.
About the Book
Marsha was five when a simple question led to a horrifying answer. Sitting in her kitchen, she asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents. Her mother told her the truth: the Holocaust.
Decades later, her parents dead and herself a mother to a young son, Marsha begins to wonder how much history has shaped her own life. Reeling in the wake of a divorce, she craves her parents’ help. But in their absence, she is gripped by a need to understand the trauma they suffered, and she begins her own journey into the past to tell her family’s stories of loss and resilience.
Kiss the Red Stairs is a compelling memoir of Holocaust survival, intergenerational trauma, divorce, and discovery that will guide readers through several lifetimes of monumental change.
About the Author
Marsha Lederman
Author and Western Arts Correspondent, The Globe and Mail
Marsha Lederman is the Western Arts Correspondent for The Globe and Mail, based in Vancouver. Before joining The Globe, Marsha worked for CBC Radio, mostly in Toronto. Before that, she worked in commercial radio as a reporter, anchor and talk show host. She is a Toronto Metropolitan University grad – graduating from the Radio and Television Arts program in 1988. She then earned her Honours B.A. in English Literature at York University. While at CBC, Marsha worked as a T.A. in Toronto Metropolitan University’s Journalism program. Born in Toronto, she has lived in Vancouver since 2007. Her first book, Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed (external link) – a memoir about intergenerational trauma – will be released on April 26th.
About the Moderator
Ruth Panofsky
Poet, Writer, Editor and Professor in the Department of English, Toronto Metropolitan University
Ruth Panofsky, FRSC teaches Holocaust Literature and Canadian Jewish Literature at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her publications include the award-winning two-volume Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington: A Critical Edition (2014), At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish Canadian Women Writers (2008), and The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman (2006). She is editor of The New Spice Box: Contemporary Jewish Writing (2020) and has published articles on Chava Rosenfarb's "Bergen-Belsen Diary, 1945" and Bernice Eisenstein's I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors. Her introduction to the most recent issue of Canadian Jewish Studies (Fall 2021) provides an overview of Canadian Holocaust Literature.
