Tilya Helfield: Short stories, a witty blog, and a memoir seeking a publisher

"Lakeside," by artist and writer Tilya Helfield

Former workshop participant Tilya Helfield recently learned that her short memoir “Blink” has been selected by Imago Press publisher and anthology editor Leila Joiner to appear in OASIS Journal 2010, a collection of prose and poetry by writers over age 50. Stories to be published are also finalists in the OASIS Journal writing competition, winners of which will be announced this fall.

In May 2010, Tilya’s short memoir “Stars,” which had appeared in Carte Blanche, Issue 10, was chosen by Cengage Learning, Inc./Nelson Education Ltd. for reprint in Canadian Content, 7th Edition, and Maple Collection.

Tilya has also launched a retro blog called “Take It From Tilya: A Woman’s Survival Guide to Any Era,” to share her humorous newspaper columns from two Montreal weeklies, The Suburban and The Sunday Express. Though published forty years ago, these are just as relevant and funny today as they were then.

And the biggest news of all: Tilya has completed writing her memoir, Metaphors for Love, for which she’s seeking a publisher. Metaphors for Love is a collection of nineteen linked short memoirs, four of which have already been published, that begin during the Second World War when she was a seven-year-old girl living in Ottawa in a close-knit Jewish community. Many of the incidents take place during her adolescence, but they also move back and forth in time, following the lives of her eccentric grandparents, parents and increasingly estranged siblings. The stories are by turns dramatic, heartbreaking, humorous and poignant, with spectres of death and war honing some to an unexpected sharp edge.