Michael Lowenthal is the author of the acclaimed novels
Charity Girl,
Avoidance, and
The Same Embrace. He has written for the
New York Times Magazine, the
New York Times Book Review, the
Washington Post Book World, the
Boston Globe, the
San Francisco Bay Guardian, and many other publications. He teaches writing at Boston College and Lesely University.
Charity Girl was inspired by a line in Susan Sontag's
AIDS and Its Metaphors, in which she likens the incarceration of American women during World War I to the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Lowenthal says, "The latter historical episode I had, of course, heard about, but not the first . . . I immediately had two thoughts: (1) how awful, and (2) what a great basis for a novel."
