Discipline: Literature – fiction

Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: Yellow Springs, OH
MacDowell Fellowships: 2017, 2020

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a novelist and poet. His first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books, 2018), received the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' honor, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the winner of the Ohioana Book Award, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, the winner of the Cincinnati Books by the Banks Author Award, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. While at MacDowell in 2017, Rothman-Zecher worked on the final draft of Sadness Is a White Bird, and wrote a new poem, entitled "Wetland," which was published in The Common in 2018. During his 2017 residency, he also began work on a new novel, inspired in part by a bilingual volume of Modern Yiddish Poetry, edited by 1965 MacDowell Fellow Ruth Whitman.

At MacDowell, he has worked on his novel Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books, 2018) and began work on a second novel, then entitled Wetland.

Studios

Phi Beta

Moriel Rothman-Zecher worked in the Phi Beta studio.

Funded by the Phi Beta Fraternity, a national professional fraternity of music and speech founded in 1912, Phi Beta Studio was built between 1929–1931 of granite quarried on the MacDowell grounds. The small studio is a simple in design, but displays a pleasing combination of materials with its granite walls and colorful slate roofing. Inside is…

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