Biography
Helen Schary Motro's most recent book, The Right to Happiness: After All They Went Through (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024) is a collection of fictional short stories exploring the varied responses of Holocaust survivors and their post-war children to the experience of conflict and trauma.
Her first book, Maneuvering between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada (Other Press, New York 2005), is a personal account of the search for peace and coexistence in Israel and Palestine.
An American lawyer living in Israel with her family as well as part of each year in her native New York, Motro began her second career as a writer during the Gulf War in 1991.
The child of Holocaust survivors, she has written extensively on the experience of the Second Generation.
Motro's commentary articles have been published in the major American and international press including The New York Times, Newsweek, and the Christian Science Monitor. A columnist for the Jerusalem Post from 1998 to 2002, Motro is recipient of the Common Ground Award for Journalism in the Middle East. Her poetry and fiction appear in literary magazines and anthologies.
Motro holds a B.A. from the University of Chicago and J.D. and LL.M. degrees from the New York University School of Law. A member of the New York and Israel bars, she has taught at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law.
She can be reached at: helenmotro@gmail.com