Jill Teiteman - Author - Saving Gracie

Fifteen years ago, a friend who was vital to my existence got sick. Whatever had felt hard about my life was suddenly replaced by terror. All we could do to fight the doom was make one another laugh. This called for a lot of dark humor, except on the hardest days when nothing worked.

I coped, or tried to, by writing a memoir which morphed into a mostly true and, I hope, sad and funny novel.

—Jill Teitelman

Jill Teitelman is as humorous and insightful in person as her alter ego, Ruth Kooperman. She has taught writing and literature at the Sorbonne, The School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, the University of Massachusetts and Simmons College.

A MacDowell Colony fellow, Teitelman’s stories have appeared in Chicago Review, Transatlantic Review, Story Quarterly and Riverrun. She has also written comic books, documentary films, encyclopedia articles, travel essays. A book she ghostwrote was featured on Good Morning America and produced public affairs programs for WOR-TV and NPR. Her greatest claim to fame is having worked for both COSMO’s Helen Gurley Brown and Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch. An avid swimmer, yoga student and traveler, Jill divides her time between Boston and Cape Cod with forays to New York City.