Author Jenna Blum to read at Kenyon College

GAMBIER, Ohio (March 28, 2005) Author Jenna Blum, a 1992 graduate of Kenyon College, will read from her novel, Those Who Save Us, at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 10, in the College's Peirce Hall Lounge.

The novel, Blum's first, tells the story of Trudy Swenson, a Holocaust survivor who was rescued as a child by an American soldier. As an adult, Trudy is driven to delve into her past when she discovers an old photograph of herself, her mother, and a Nazi soldier. Now a professor of German history, Trudy begins investigating her past, finally unearthing the truth of her mother's life.

The daughter of a Jewish newsman and a German concert pianist, Blum spent four years in the early 1990s interviewing Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and drew extensively on those experiences in writing her book. She teaches writing at Boston University.

Blum's visit to Kenyon is sponsored by the departments of English and religious studies, the Kenyon Review, and Kenyon's chapter of Hillel. The reading is free and open to the public.