Feminist Shtetl Horror: An Interview with Elizabeth Schwartz

Eliz­a­beth Schwartz has had a wide-rang­ing career, from recipe books of Jew­ish food, to radio dra­mas such as The Witch­es of Lublin, to being one of the most acclaimed female Yid­dish vocal­ists of a gen­er­a­tion. Now, she has added yet anoth­er string to her bow with her new col­lec­tion of hor­ror novel­las. The Sweet Fra­grance of Life and Oth­er Hor­ror Sto­ries takes influ­ence from folk­lore and writ­ers such as Angela Carter to carve a new niche with­in the Jew­ish goth­ic: ​“fem­i­nist shtetl hor­ror.” The col­lec­tion com­pris­es three sto­ries, each tak­ing place in a dif­fer­ent peri­od of Jew­ish his­to­ry, and each is pre­sent­ed in both Eng­lish and Yid­dish, with a trans­la­tion by Nik­ki Olnianski.

To cel­e­brate the release of ​“The Sweet Fra­grance of Life and Oth­er Hor­ror Sto­ries” in audio­book for­mat (read by Yele­na Shmu­len­son and with music by Yale Strom), writer and Jew­ish-hor­ror obses­sive Mol­ly Adams of the Jew­ish Hor­ror Review inter­views Schwartz about the influ­ences present in her writ­ing, inter­act­ing with the hor­ror genre as a Jew­ish woman, and her role in the sur­vival of Yiddish.

To read the full interview, click here.