Uncovering the Path to Uncovered: A Celebration of Leah Lax

As any writer will tell you, the publication of a book is an occasion for celebration—especially one that has been written and rewritten and agonized over for a decade. So it is clearly time for Leah Lax to celebrate the publication (on August 28) of her long awaited and compelling memoir, Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home.

Inprint’s connection to Leah and this book goes back many years. You might consider this “extra-textual”: it’s not in the book.

Sometime in early 1996, when I was still “the new guy” at Inprint, I received a phone call from Rosellen Brown, the acclaimed writer and faculty member at the UH Creative Writing Program (UH CWP). Rosellen had a friend in the Houston Hasidic community who was a school teacher and a talented writer. Inprint gave scholarships to Houston-area K-12 teachers to take our writers workshops. (Now we offer Teachers-as-Writers Workshops, essentially the same thing.) Rosellen wondered: Could her friend Leah receive a teacher scholarship?

Of course, I said—and the rest is history.

Leah’s first foray into publicly taking herself seriously as a writer was a poetry workshop at Inprint led by UH CWP alum Marty Scott, a fine poet who died in 2005. Taking the workshop wasn’t easy for Leah. She arrived in full Hasidic garb, with a scarf over her wig, long sleeves, and a long skirt, terrified of and unfamiliar with this part of town; and Marty took her seriously, for which Leah has always been grateful. It was part of the process of transitioning from one world to another that her memoir so vividly describes.

At one point during the course of the workshop, Marty took Leah aside and pointed out that UH had a fine graduate creative writing program, and that she should consider applying for admission—a vote of confidence.

Leah took more Inprint Writers Workshops—from essayist and novelist Emily Fox Gordon and essayist and fiction writer Allen Gee (both also UH CWP alums)—and finally in the spring of 1998, just days before the deadline, she got up the nerve to apply to the UH Creative Writing Program. She asked Allen to write a letter of recommendation for her (along with Rosellen, of course). She was admitted to the Program that fall, was awarded an Inprint Cambor Fellowship, and sent Allen flowers.

Our connection with Leah has only grown richer over the years. After completing her MFA at the UH CWP in 2003, she came back to teach Inprint Writers Workshops for many years in personal essay, fiction, and memoir. A terrific teacher, she also for several years led Inprint Memoir Workshops for Senior Citizens at the Jewish Community Center.

Our connection with Leah has only grown richer over the years. After completing her MFA at the UH CWP in 2003, she came back to teach Inprint Writers Workshops for many years in personal essay, fiction, and memoir. A terrific teacher, she also for several years led Inprint Memoir Workshops for Senior Citizens at the Jewish Community Center.

In fact, it was her skill at eliciting stories from the seniors that led to our recommending Leah to Houston Grand Opera as librettist for The Refuge. This work, a celebration of several of Houston’s immigrant communities, involved interviewing dozens of diverse community members and, from the text of the interviews, creating a libretto. The Refuge, which was profiled in (among many other publications) The New York Times, was a great success.

Leah also spent about two years in the Inprint attic here at 1520 West Main (cluttered, but finished and air conditioned) as our first “writer in residence.” We actually introduced Leah to her agent Gail Hochman in 2002 (as an outgrowth of our program The Business of Writing), who worked with Leah on the memoir for several years.

Are we proud of Leah Lax? You bet. Are we grateful to her? Yes. And are we thrilled about Uncovered? Of course!

The celebration continues throughout the fall, as Leah gives readings across Houston and throughout the country from Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home. The next one is at Brazos Bookstore on Wednesday, September 2, 7 pm. Hope to see you there.