Lisa Gruenberg

Physician, Medical Educator, Writer

My City of Dreams

DELUXE PAPERBACK WITH READER’S GUIDE & CONVERSATIONS COMING IN 2024

In this carefully researched and hauntingly written memoir, Lisa Gruenberg not only records her own life, but also that of relatives long lost to darkness, terror, and murder. In dreamlike sequences, she weaves known facts of the lives of those lost into tableaus of imagined family dinners, conversations and leisure activities set in the Vienna landscape.
Read an excerpt from the book…

– Sabine Hildebrandt, author of Anatomy of a Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich

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"Gruenberg wields all the tools in the writer's armamentarium - memoir, fiction, dream journals and reportage - to rebuild the lost city of her past."

– ALEX BEAM
author of Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital

"A heartfelt and authoritative contribution to the literature of memory and Jewish history."

– TONY EPRILE
author of The Persistence of Memory, Temporary Sojourner & Other South African Stories

"Gruenberg’s search for coherence becomes a journey of discovery and imagination and ultimately brings her to an understanding that proves to be a form of healing."

– JANE BROX
author of Brilliant and Silence

"This beautifully written book takes you from America to Vienna and back as it explores the meaning of the Holocaust, memory, mortality and life."

– JOSEPH NYE
author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump

My Story

Raised in Syracuse, NY, I am a volunteer physician, medical educator and writer based in New England. I began writing in 2004 when my father, a Viennese Holocaust survivor, began having nightmares and flashbacks about his past. My City of Dreams, published in 2019 by TidePool Press, is a Holocaust tale, but it is also a modern-day story of the relationship between one daughter and her father, about how trauma travels down through generations and how we find meaning in our lives. My essays have been published in several literary magazines, including Ploughshares, The Intima, a Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. My short story set in South Africa, Keiskamma, won the 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. I am currently working on a young adult novel and three linked novellas.

More About Me

Speaking Engagements

Lisa offers readings, interviews and book club conversations. In addition to solo engagements, she can provide discussions with other authors and artists. Lisa can also present a history of medicine and psychiatry focused on a case study from 1942 by Victor Frankl, as well as use her book to explore bioethics and the transformation of genealogy research into personal narrative.

Please reach out to hello@lisagruenberg.com to schedule your next in-person or virtual event.