Q&A with Pamela Reitman
Please welcome Pamela Reitman to our Featured Author Q&A series at Writer’s Fun Zone. Enjoy!
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If you’d like to be considered for an interview, check out our guidelines here.
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About Pamela Reitman
Pamela Reitman is a Jewish Book Council Network Author and an award-winning writer, most recently Winner of the Fall 2025 PenCraft Book Award for Literary Excellence.
She has numerous publications in literary journals, news outlets, and magazines.
She holds a B.A. with honors in English from Columbia and a master’s degree from UC Berkeley.
She is retired from a career in public health, also from community service aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness.
Pamela is past Director of Makor Or: A Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco.
She is lay ordained in the Zen Buddhist tradition.
On to Our Interview!
Q. Tell us who you are and what inspires you to write
A. I’m retired.
I was visiting the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco — this was 2012 — where there was an exhibit of paintings by Charlotte Salomon from her masterpiece, Life? Or Theater?
On display were 250 or so of the 769 (in total) watercolor/gouache paintings, telling the story of a coming-of-age during Hitler’s rise to power and a coming-to-terms with a legacy of female suicide.
Her paintings delivered an emotional punch.
Her story was heart-wrenching and inspiring.
What she achieved was miraculous.
I knew I needed to bring her to life in literature.
Q, How did you get to this place in your life? Share your story!
A. I was born to Jewish parents.
When I was sixteen, I heard these words: six million.
I wanted to understand the Holocaust, and I never could because what had happened was beyond comprehension.
Even though there were no survivors in my family that I knew of, I considered myself a remnant of Eastern European Jewry.
Then, in my 50’s, I began to feel compelled to respond.
When I encountered Charlotte Salomon’s work, the moment resonated with my sixteen-year-old self and with the part of me that longed to respond.
And so, I wrote Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life.
Q. What are you most passionate about?
A. I am most passionate about writing as a means of expression for myself.
There have been times in my life that I thought I would rather not be alive than not be able to write.
I don’t feel that way anymore.
Still, writing is very important, anything: fiction, poetry, essays.
And I’m passionate about reading.
It is my favorite way to fall asleep, to wake up, to go for a walk (audio then), to spend a lazy afternoon, which hardly ever happens, but still.
I care very much about the lack of justice and equality in the world and the extent of cruelty and how we can turn this ship toward what is humane and kind.
On the lighter side, I am currently obsessed with Sudoku on my phone.
I’m determined to get to the Expert level.
But playing is cutting into my reading time.
Yikes!
More hours in the day, please!
Q. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process, routine, and/or rituals around your writing?
A. When I was writing Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life, I treated it like a job.
I reported to my desk by 9:00 AM and wrote until 1:00.
I had lunch, and in the afternoon, I did research, reading, and planning next scenes.
I frequently worked in the evening, especially on days that I needed to run errands in the afternoon or had appointments.
I worked seven days a week.
I rarely went out with people.
One routine I had was to keep a log in which I recorded the time I sat down at my desk and the time when I got up, even if it was for a 15-minute break.
I wanted to know how much time I was actually working as opposed to how much time I thought I was.
At the beginning of the month, I created a written plan.
At the end of the month, I detailed what I had accomplished.
These days, while I’m writing, I don’t have a routine for that activity, but I do keep to a routine for book promotion which requires a lot of writing, just not fiction.
Still, I’ve managed to write a long short story.
I don’t know how.
Q. What are a few challenges you faced in creating, marketing, or publishing your creative work? And your solutions to them.
A. I was not going to be able to afford to travel to Europe.
How would I learn what I needed to know?
The library system in San Francisco is fantastic, linked to many other libraries in California and Nevada.
Of the more than 100 sources I needed, I found all but one through that system.
The biggest challenge in publishing was finding a publisher!
When I first sent my work out, the feedback from agents and publishers made me realize I had to do an overhaul.
Originally there was a secondary narrative.
I had to take it out.
It wasn’t tied in closely enough to Charlotte’s story.
I had to change from the first-person to the third.
And I had to deepen Charlotte’s character.
Cutting the secondary narrative gave me a large word count to work with to accomplish that task.
In marketing, it was difficult to make the transition from being a writer with a very private life to understanding that as an author I am a public person.
I abhorred the idea of selling myself, but what helped was realizing that I was wanting to share who Charlotte Salomon had been.
I wanted to honor her.
Q. What do you wish you had known before you started writing fiction?
A. I started writing fiction in the 1990’s.
I wish I had known the importance of story structure and how to develop it.
An idea is one thing — a story is another.
It took me a long time to figure that out and then find a way to learn it.
I wish I had known how long it would take me to learn many elements of craft: how to compose a scene, create a character, design a conflict, write a dialogue, incorporate flashbacks.
It’s very important to be part of a literary community and a good citizen within it.
I was not so good at that during the years of writing Charlotte.
I thought I didn’t have the time for networking.
I would never get the book written.
I was right, but I should have done it anyway.
I wish I had known how much I would have to sacrifice to write a novel.
For me, the writing life is all-consuming.
Well, nearly so.
Of course, I have friends and go to dinner, but I still report to work at my desk, even though these days it’s mainly for book promotion.
And I’m so lucky!
I love this life!
Q. What’s next for you in your creative work?
A. I’ve been working on a long short story for the last year.
And I understand that there are some literary journals and such that are particularly seeking the long form.
It’s fun because it’s different for me.
It still needs a little work, but I like finishing something in one year instead of twelve.
I could possibly explore expanding this story into a novella.
Hmm?
I also have a full-length manuscript for another novel.
It needs some sizable revision.
I have a memoir, too, which is also a full-length draft in need of revision.
It seems for me that when someone I love dies, I’m inclined to write poems.
I have a set for each of three people (my father, my brother, my son).
I could make a chapbook of these on loss and grief.
A bit baffled at the moment as to which direction to head in.
I might try working on more than one thing at a time.
Not my style at all . . . but could be!
Q. Is there anything else you wished I’d asked? Please share!
A. I would like your audience to know that I have a program entitled “Survival Through Art: The Life and Work of Charlotte Salomon,” a slideshow presentation with full-color paintings by the artist and photos of Charlotte’s family and friends.
This program focuses on how the creative force, the making of her masterpiece Life? Or Theater?, transformed the many traumas of Charlotte’s young life and saved her from suicide.
It celebrates her courage to create under dire circumstances, and to risk her life to ensure her legacy.
This is an in-person presentation.
To book this program, contact me through my website.
I also am available for Q&A sessions with book groups.
In person or on zoom.
Again, to book, contact me through my website.
Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life: A Novel by Pamela Reitman
Reitman’s re-creation of Salomon’s life is composed of two opposing themes: art as a tool to interpret trauma, and the intractable tentacles of family secrets and shame that threaten to choke artistic expression. Blending fact with fiction, the novel is a touching synthesis that celebrates Charlotte’s fearless belief that only in art can one defy “the erasure of identity.”
Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life is a powerful historical novel, at turns winsome and wrenching, about a gifted artist caught in the maelstrom of madness and war.
—Peggy Kurkowski, Foreword Reviews
Connect with Pamela Reitman
Website: https://pamelareitman.com
Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GAhCW_ODSw
Facebook: https://bit.ly/45VzPBG
