Cathleen Schine speaking at 51st SBWC

Speaking at the 51st Annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference Cathleen Schine is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Love Letter and Rameau’s Niece, which were made into movies, as well as The Three Weissmanns of Westport, Fin & Lady and The Grammarians. Her latest novel, Künstlers in Paradise, is a tender family story but also a profound meditation on the nature and power of storytelling, inheritance and legacy. When Julian Kunstler’s life falls apart (the Brooklyn bookstore where he works has closed and his girlfriend has dumped him), he agrees to move in with his 93-year-old grandmother, Mamie, in Venice, California, while her fractured wrist heals. Then comes Covid-19 and the lockdown. To fill their days, Mamie begins telling him the story of her life, starting with her cultured existence in Vienna until the family was forced to flee in 1939 and make a new life in sunny California where they joined a colony of Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler.