Lore Segal, esteemed Austrian American writer who fled the Nazis as a child, dies at 96

AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Lore Segal, an esteemed Austrian American author and translator, has died at 96. Publisher Melville House said Segal died Monday morning after a brief illness. Her gift for words helped her family escape from the Nazis and later helped Segal draw upon her experiences as a Jewish refugee and immigrant for such fiction as “Other People’s Houses” and “Her First American.” Segal wrote novels, short stories, essays and children’s books and translated Biblical stories and Grimms’ fairy tales, which featured illustrations by her friend Maurice Sendak. Her other admirers included Cynthia Ozick, Vivian Gornick and Alfred Kazin, and in 2008 she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for “Shakespeare’s Kitchen.”