Stephanie

About me:

..Stephanie Silberstein's Profile

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I have a very internal focus. I think I look at myself through other people’s eyes, but sometimes I can lose touch with how things work for me. Then I can get introspective, going very deep and staying there, not coming out too quickly or easily. Somehow I find it very difficult to put into words and communicate the things that really matter to me. Most people don’t have the foggiest notion about what goes on with me.....

I like harmony and seek consensus and do well with the deep issues. My values and the things that are important to me often feel outside the mainstream in the sense that I feel impinged upon and uncomfortable with so much of what goes on. I’m too private to push my values on to other people, but I am convinced that one ought to be congruent in their own life if they are going to expect congruence from others. In a sense I hold other people to that standard, and I worry about my own incongruities, inconsistencies, and contradictions. Groups can be hard. I can put myself in the group process so rapidly and so completely, and it’s important not to get sucked in. I need to be predictable about what I believe.....

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Isolation. Prejudice. Loss.

Stephanie Silberstein not only writes about heartbreak--she's lived it. She grew up as the only Jewish child in her neighborhood, enduring covert anti-Semitism during the annual Christmas concert and the occasional openly prejudiced remark. Her experiences were the basis of her first novel, Winter's Silence, which came out in 2008.

Ms. Silberstein escaped the suburbs in 1998, landing in Los Angeles. While she was studying to get her MFA, she lived with, and fell for, a recovering alcoholic and addict. She left years of poverty and heartbreak behind in 2006, heading back east to a new life in North Carolina. Shortly after her arrival there, her friend died of a drug-induced heart attack.

Despite these setbacks, Ms. Silberstein continually moves forward, embracing the Jewish notion of "Tikkun Olam" (heal the world). She is passionate about GLBT rights as well as the rights of disabled children. She is writing a second novel, Shades of Gay, in order to illustrate the way non-heterosexuals are treated in small town America.

Ms. Silberstein owns her own publishing company, Narrow Path Publishing, along with her two best friends. Together they are demonstrating that "there is enough room in this world for everybody to be successful."

Click here to see the Narrow Path Publishing myspace page.