Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life - Paperback

by Nancy Ludmerer (Author), Peg Alford Pursell (Editor)

Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life is historical fiction based on the life of the title character, who was confined in the Jewish ghetto in Venice from her birth in 1592 until her death 49 years later. Sarra's father supported her secular as well as her Hebrew education, and she studied classical Greek, Latin, and philosophy, and wrote poetry and letters. Sarra even convened a literary salon in the ghetto that was attended regularly by Christian clerics-including one who came to accuse her of heresy. In crystalline prose, Nancy Ludmerer reimagines Sarra's relationships with her family, her inner world, and her strong but often troubled connections with the Christian world outside the ghetto.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nancy Ludmerer's stories appear in Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, New Orleans Review, the Saturday Evening Post, and many other journals. They have been translated into Spanish, read aloud on public radio, and have won prizes from Masters Review, Carve, Pulp Literature, and others. Her story The Loneliness Cure won Orison Books' Best Spiritual Literature Prize for fiction and appears in Best Spiritual Literature, Vol. 7, 2022. Her short memoir "Kritios Boy" (Literal Latte) was cited in Best American Essays 2014 and other nonfiction appears in Vogue, The American Lawyer, and Green Mountain Review. Ludmerer's debut collection Collateral Damage: 48 Stories won the 2022 Snake Nation Press's annual fiction prize.