Listening for Stories Across Places and Time with Jill Arlene Culiner: The Bookish Magazine

Jill Arlene Culiner is a writer and artist whose work is shaped by movement, observation, and a deep attentiveness to human stories. Born in New York and raised in Toronto, she has lived in a wide range of environments and cultures, experiences she often draws on in her creative life. Her writing spans fiction and memoir, and she approaches storytelling as both craft and curiosity—listening closely to what people reveal, what places hold, and how memory reshapes experience. In this conversation, Culiner reflects on her creative journey, her relationship with place and narrative, and the ways stories continue to evolve across a lifetime.

Jill, thank you for joining us. To begin, could you introduce yourself in your own words—what you do, how you see your creative life, and what continues to motivate your work today?

I’m a spy. I peek into other people’s lives, ferret out what lies behind a façade, what truths are hidden by lies. And because I’m nosy and love storytelling, the information gleaned finds its way into my books and into my art.

You’ve described your life as one shaped by movement and lived experience across many places. How has living in such varied environments influenced the way you observe people and tell stories?

I think being uncomfortable in dangerous or iffy places and unstable situations has kept me calm but with my antennae twitching. I’ve had several frankly dangerous experiences, and if I hadn’t kept my head, I wouldn’t be sitting here and writing this now. Perhaps my best survival tool, however, is knowing how to be chummy and nice in the worst circumstances. Learning how to sound people out, how to listen, and win people over—all these have certainly honed my storytelling skills.

Your work spans writing and visual art. How do these creative forms complement one another, and how do you decide which medium best serves a particular idea or story?

Some years ago, during one of my exhibitions, I told a curator that I was planning to cross Romania on foot and look for the trace of nineteenth-century immigrants, and that this would be a photography project. She corrected me immediately, insisting this was the theme for a book. She was absolutely right.

And so, my first non-fiction, Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers, was born. Since then, I’ve had no problem keeping my artwork separate from my writing. In both, there is satire and social criticism, but in my writing, I strive for original and rebellious characters, striking images, atmosphere, and beautiful phrases.

Many writers collect stories simply by listening. You’ve spoken about your fascination with the everyday, the humorous, and the unexpected—what draws you most to certain stories over others?

No one is more delightful than people who can laugh at themselves, be self-critical. Their self-mockery is catching. How often I’ve stepped back to recognise my own silliness and ridiculous behaviour! I am, however, stimulated by those who are incapable of distance, who take themselves seriously, who are pompous, and who think they’re fooling us all. These are definitely the characters who find themselves in my literary and artistic work.

Place seems to play an important role in your creative imagination. How do physical settings—homes, landscapes, villages—shape the emotional atmosphere of your work?

I love beauty—natural beauty, architectural beauty, wonderful music, and stimulating art. I love working in beautiful old places, even if they’re uncomfortable. And I’ve always been a voyeur, peeking into windows and examining interiors, seeing how curtains, knickknacks, pictures, furniture, colours, and décor reflect our society and personal aspirations. We reveal ourselves through the objects we choose, and it is up to me, as a writer, to present what I see, admire, and hate in my characters and descriptions.

Over the years, you’ve received recognition for your writing. Rather than listing accolades, how do moments of acknowledgment influence your relationship with your work, if at all?

Recognition and awards don’t change my work. I’m pig-headed: I’ll keep on doing things my way, whether or not people approve. However, when I win prizes or get wonderful reviews, I have an intense feeling of satisfaction. How could it be otherwise? And each time, I say to myself, “Hey, kid. You did it!”

2024 Prize for Memoir, Toronto, Credit: Gary Beechey

Looking back, how has your understanding of storytelling changed from your early writing to the work you are producing now?

I began writing many years ago, and it was dreadful, turgid stuff. It took maturity, experience, a long apprenticeship, and many bad, unpublished books before I started getting things right. Then, when I first started publishing romances as J. Arlene Culiner, I decided they would be intelligent and trope-less. My characters would be unconventional; my language would be rich, and there would be a certain amount of memoir in each. I applied the same rules in my non-fiction books, even though they were investigative historical travel works. I also know, thanks to all that earlier fooling around, that every book needs many, many rewrites.

Many readers are drawn to stories that feel both grounded and imaginative. How do you balance lived experience with invention in your creative process?

Everything I write under my name, Jill (Arlene) Culiner, is based on reality. In my newest (general) fiction, Words for Patty Jo, the characters are based on real people, although they’re composites, and well-disguised. And because the story takes place in several countries and spans over fifty years, it contains much memoir. This, I think, is its strong point, for we all love learning about the people around us—how they live, how they cope.

What role does curiosity play in sustaining a long creative life, and how do you continue to cultivate it?

I think curiosity (or sheer nosiness) is a gift. Either you have it or you don’t. It makes life fascinating, keeps us learning, investigating. So many people never ask questions. They only want to talk about themselves, their families, their problems, their feelings, phobias, and goals. I suppose such people can be creative too; frankly, I don’t know how they do it.

For emerging writers or artists who feel unsure about their path, what lessons—learned through experience rather than theory—have stayed with you?

Persistence is important, but also self-awareness. We have to understand our limits, and it isn’t shameful to give up on something. Of utmost importance is reading all sorts of books—literary and general fiction, literary travel, classics, translations from countries we don’t know. Too often, new writers read only in the genre they want to write in, and they’re stunting themselves. As for emerging artists, just show where you can and don’t follow trends. Solidarity is of the utmost importance; but no matter what you do, be nice.

If you were to write your own bio, what would you say? And as your work evolves, what kind of impact do you hope it has?

Author Portrait, Credit: Wanted Models

I’d like to think that my non-fiction books would continue to be a reference, for they are based on little-known quirks of history. Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers won the Tanenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History and was shortlisted for the Foreword Magazine Prize. For my biography of a largely forgotten nineteenth-century Yiddish poet, A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard, I travelled through Ukraine and Romania to Turkey.

My most recent non-fiction book, Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain, won the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir and was short-listed for the Page Turner Award. As for my artwork, I have shown all across Europe, and my photographic exhibition about Europe’s vanished Jewish community, La Mémoire Effacée, toured France, Canada, and Hungary under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNESCO (https://canada-culture.org/en/event/la-memoire-effacee-2/).