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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/30769/full/30769/a-storied-career-for-koret-book-prizewinner/ <br /><br /> <b>A storied career for Koret book prizewinner</b> <br /> Friday, November 3, 2006 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Winning a Koret Jewish Book Award wasn't exactly like winning the lottery for Julie Orringer. After all, to be eligible the former Stanford University Stegner Fellow did have to actually sit down and write her acclaimed short stories. <br /><br /> But winning the 2006 Anne and Robert Cowan Writer's Award of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund did come as a happy shock to Orringer. The financial prize associated with it didn't hurt either.<br /><br /> "Writers don't get paid enough," she laughs from her temporary home in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she is co-teaching a graduate level fiction-writing course with her husband and fellow author, Ryan Harty. "I received a call over the summer that I had won. It was a complete surprise."<br /><br /> That it is a Jewish book award makes things all the sweeter for the longtime San Francisco-based writer, who considers her Jewish upbringing to be crucial to her personal and professional identity.<br /><br /> "I grew up in a family where there were many varieties of Judaism," says Orringer, who spent much of her childhood in New Orleans. "My family was Conservative, but we had cousins who were Reform and Chassidic. I experienced the range of variations of Jewishness, which made me realize Judaism is constantly evolving."<br /><br /> She introduces her Jewish background into her work, most notably in stories like "Stars of Motown Shining Bright," about two Jewish high school girls who go on a spontaneous Midwest road trip; and "The Smoothest Way is Full of Stones," about a Jewish girl who visits her observant cousins one summer. <br /><br /> "She is both mystified by rituals of observance and attracted to them," retells Orringer. "She and her cousin are swimming in a place they're not supposed to be, and they come across a book of forbidden sex practices. They're both intensely curious about it, and that fascination leads the protagonist to question the purpose of strict religious belief and the restrictions on contact between men and women."<br /><br /> That and eight other stories comprised her first collection, "How to Breathe Underwater," published in 2003. But some of the stories go back much further than that.<br /><br /> "I wrote them over a long period of time," says Orringer. "The first was written in 1996, and then I wrote maybe 30 more short stories. I would make changes to them but my professor told me, 'At a certain point you have to let go and honor your development.' It was completely terrifying and so strange to have this thing that felt really private suddenly become fairly public."<br /><br /> Rave reviews probably eased her anxiety. Ms. Magazine called her collection "absolutely magnificent," while the Boston Globe claimed Orringer "writes with penetrating intelligence and remarkable self-possession."<br /><br /> That doesn't always come easily. Orringer moved to San Francisco in 1996 to explore a literary career, and quickly fell in love with the city. "It was where I became an adult," she says. "My first year in town, I lived in the Castro with poet friends, writing at night and feeling I was so lucky to be living in this incredible city."<br /><br /> She was admitted to the prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, where she met her husband-to-be. The couple lived in the Haight for nine years. She says they've helped each other to become better writers.<br /><br /> "When I was writing in college," remembers Orringer, "I wanted to write quickly, have it be perfect and never look at it again. I had to learn how to slow down on a first draft and be really patient in revising. I had to be braver about cracking open the manuscript to move things around."<br /><br /> Orringer is currently completing her first novel, based on the life of her grandfather. "It's about a Hungarian Jewish man who receives a scholarship to study architecture in Paris," she says. "He meets other young Jewish students and falls in love. When the war begins he's conscripted into the Hungarian labor service."<br /><br /> Orringer hopes to finish the novel this year. And when it's published and up for sale, it's safe to say she might have another encounter like one she had when her short story collection hit the stores.<br /><br /> "The first day it came out I was in a bookstore in Santa Barbara," says Orringer. "I saw a woman pause at a table, open my book and read the flap copy. I wanted to say to her, 'Buy that book!'"</p>

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