photo: Paul Robinson
Responding to a restless, internal dialogue, my writing comes from a unifying desire to connect with people as I do as a performer and teacher, seizing the moment and transforming it.
`Impassioned, clear prose.’ (Carol Bergman, writer: NY, 2018)
Contact: normacohen52@gmail.com; 07931 173981
agent: John Parker:
thejohnparkerconsultancy@gmail.com
NORMA COHEN: WRITING CV
Profile:
Norma Cohen is a London based writer/performer whose writing ranges from novels and short stories to plays for stage and radio and arts journalism. Much of her work reflects, with a light touch and a deal of sardonic humour, her experience of growing up in Liverpool in a Jewish Communist household during the Cold War era. Trained as a dancer, Norma moved into theatre, and later into journalism and fiction writing. She currently maintains both strands of her professional life, writing and performing, and has just completed her second novel:
Waiting for Farid.
Fiction:
Ganzer Macher: dramatised reading of novel extracts: Novel London/Big Green Bookshop
Waiting for Farid: reading of novel extract: Novel London/Travelling Through Bookshop
The Fish and Chip Boat: Celebrating Liverpool and Culture: Orbis magazine
Childhood short story: Jewish Year Book 2008/09
At the Adelphi: novel extract from
1956: Saying Goodbye: Jewish Renaissance
A Violent Tale/Mordechai’s First Brush with Love: short story, Loki Books
Novel extracts: Jewish Book Week readings: Hackney Libraries, Stoke Newington Bookshop
- Non-Fiction:
- Karl Marx was a Scouser: a Liverpudlian childhood: lead feature, Jewish Quarterly
- Alan Kane: Britain’s Ambassador of Song: lead feature, Jewish Renaissance & The Cable
- Theatre works: A Guide to Working in the Theatre pub.National Theatre/ Theatre Museum
- Radiant Illusion? Middle-class recruits to communism in the 1930s. Eve Editions.
- Out of Focus: Images of Women in the Media. Women’s Press
- Death of a Mother; daughters’ stories: John Lennon is dead; in memoriam. Pandora Press
- Bouquet with Flying Lovers, Celebrating a Life. Gally Cat Press/ MS Society
- The Fish and Chip Boat: Celebrating Liverpool and Culture. Orbis magazine
- Lithuania: Place of Rain: lead feature, Jewish Renaissance
- The Dybbuk of Delight: Jewish Women’s Poetry. Poems. Five Leaves Press.
- Theatre plays:
- Key to Return set in Palestine (P21 Gallery, 2022)
- Gone for a Burton Rehearsed Reading, JW3
- No Reasonable Offer Refused Rehearsed Reading, Park Theatre 2013
- Does it come with Ketchup? Rosemary Branch 2009
- Giulietta’s Feast: relationship between Federico Fellini and his wife/muse Giulietta Masina: Rehearsed Readings, Rosemary Branch & Stratford East 2009
- Toot, Toot: TV comedy drama Rehearsed Reading Ship of Fools 2008
- The Unbroken Line: Rehearsed Readings Theatre Royal, Stratford East & Rosemary Branch Theatre 2008
- My Federico/Giulietta’s Feast Rehearsed Reading with Jane Lapotaire, Rosemary Branch (Arts Council Commission Award) 2000
- Radio:
- The Last Supper (short story) BBC Radio 4, director Alfred Bradley
- That’s Up to You, Comrade (play) Rehearsed Reading Jewish Book Week/Hackney Libraries
- The Deeper Well (play, set in the former GDR) extract, LBC Drama Festival
- Let’s Move: two series of play scripts for BBC Schools Radio
- Pen to Paper: sketches, BBC Radio 4
- Film:
- Picnic in Gaza (screenplay: PVK Pictures)
- Journalism:
- recent:
- English PEN 2019: memorial: Raficq Abdullah
- Part of a current: one of the family: House of Commons, December, 2017
- Cape Times, South Africa: Insight: David Lurie obituary
- New Camden Journal: Party Animals by David Aaronovitch: book review/feature
- The Guardian, Other Lives: obituary: David Lurie
- Smithdown Litfest 2017, Liverpool: review: publisher Ian Skillicorn’s website
- Heldenplatz: Jewish Socialist
- previous:
- Freelance arts journalism for Yorkshire Post, The Lecturer, The Guardian, Dance & Dancer, Radio Times, Jewish Quarterly, Jewish Renaissance
- Dance Editor: TES
- Health Editor: City Limits
- Awards/Prizes:
- Society of Women Writers & Journalists Charitable Foundation: bursary for novel writing
- Arts Council, England: grant for mentoring from writer Jacob Ross on novel in progress: Leaving Lime Street, set in Liverpool, 1956
- Arts Council Literature Award: further writing grant to finish the novel
- British Embassy Lithuania funding: to research family roots in Lithuania and meet with Jewish writers in Vilnius and Kaunas
- WIZO Short Story Prize for Goodbye to Childish Things
- Arts Council Commission Award to write stage play: My Federico
- Waiting for Farid, novel extract, finalist EASTSIDE/TEXACO Competition