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Mira Bartok biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Mira Bartok
Photo: Doug Plavin

Mira Bartok

How to pronounce Mira Bartok: bar-tawk

Mira Bartok Biography

Mira Bartók is a Chicago-born artist and writer and the author of twenty-eight books for children. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals and anthologies and has been noted in The Best American Essays series. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she runs Mira's List (http://www.miraslist.blogspot.com), a blog that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world. The Memory Palace is Mira's first book for adults.

Mira Bartok's website

This bio was last updated on 02/25/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

A conversation with Mira Bartók about The Memory Palace, her breathtaking literary memoir about the complex meaning of love, truth, and the capacity for forgiveness among family.

You mention that your mother admired the ability of a person to mix words and art. Do you think she would have been proud of this book, which combines your artwork with your writing? Did your mother's encouragement prompt you to combine words and art, or did you always think you'd be a writer?

I think she would have been very proud of me for writing this book, although there are many parts in it that would upset her, too. However, I know she would have liked the artwork and she would have appreciated the great effort it took to create a book like this, given my disability. As far as always thinking I would be a writer, I never thought about that and still don't think of myself in that way. Although I always wrote—mostly poetry, essays, and short fiction, and also I made artists' book with images and text—I am an artist first, and that means, for me, that I serve the idea. If the idea, which often starts out as an image, needs to be a story, then I will write a story. If it should be a painting or a film, then I have to follow that trajectory. My next project is an illustrated young adult novel/adult fiction crossover. I have also started to explore creating radio documentaries with...

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Books by this Author

Books by Mira Bartok at BookBrowse
The Memory Palace jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Mira Bartok but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • E.L. Doctorow

    E.L. Doctorow

    Named for Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the history of American literature. On a shortlist that might also include Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Don ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Memory Palace

    Try:
    Homer & Langley
    by E.L. Doctorow

  • Kim Edwards

    Kim Edwards

    Kim Edwards is the author of a short story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and has won both a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award, and is a graduate of ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Memory Palace

    Try:
    The Memory Keeper's Daughter
    by Kim Edwards

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