Member Profile

Judith Kalman was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1954, and grew up in Montreal. Her B.A. is from Concordia University and her M.A. is from the University of Windsor where she studied creative writing with Joyce Carol Oates and Alistair Macleod. She has lived in Windsor, London, Ontario, and Grand Prairie, Alberta. Currently she resides  in Toronto.

Judith's collection of linked short stories, The County of Birches, was published by Douglas & McIntyre in 1998 and St. Martin’s Press in the U.S. in 1999. It was a co-winner of the Danuta Gleed Award and a finalist for the U.S. National Jewish Book Award. Several stories in the collection received individual awards. “Not for Me a Crown of Thorns” appeared in the Journey Prize Anthology. “Flight” won the Tilden Canadian Literary Award for non-fiction, a National Magazine Award, and the President’s Medal for overall best magazine publication, and was broadcast on CBC’s Between the Covers. Other stories from the collection have been anthologized in The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women, and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada, as well as in other anthologies.

Eight of the seventeen chapters from the memoir Called to Testify: The Big Story in My Small Life have appeared under different titles and in altered forms in the following publications: “Testifying” was published on October 30, 2017 by Another Chicago Magazine, and was included among ‘Notable Essays of 2017” in The Best American Essays 2018. Another piece, “In Sickness and in Health,” was published in STORGY Magazine on March 14, 2018. “Red” appeared on May 15, 2018 in Barzakh Magazine. “About Time” was published in The Nasiona on September 24, 2018. “Us and Them” appeared in 2017 in the German anthology Die Letzten NS-Verfahren (The Last National Socialist Procedures.) An abridged version of my testimony at the Oskar Gröning Nazi War Crimes Trial was published by the BBC in April, 2015. “Strange Bedfellows” was published in the fall of 2020 by Iris Journal. “La Campagne” appeared in the 2020 Fall/Winter issue of Bluestem Literary Magazine. The book length manuscript, Called to Testify: The Big Story in My Small Life, originally titled Lost and Found: A Memoir, received Honourable Mention in Memoir Magazine’s 2020 Memoir Prize for Books competition.

Called to Testify: The Big Story in My Small Life was published by Sutherland House Books in May 2022.