WHATCOM WRITES is a writing competition held in connection with our annual county-wide book club.
This year’s book, Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn, inspired the theme of hindsight. Some writers wrote with regret of questions not asked, paths not taken. Others looked back with humor and gratitude.
I wrote about my friend Edith Zwartendijk, the daughter of a Dutch diplomat who saved the lives of over two thousand Jews in Lithuania during World War Two. Only after his death in 1976, did Jan Zwartendijk’s heroic story come to light. Edith, now 92 years old, unveiled a memorial to her father last June in Kaunas, Lithuania. A biography of her father, already available in Dutch, will be published in English next year.
To read my essay Memorial , included in this year’s WHATCOM WRITES anthology, please click on the title in the navigation bar. Or you can purchase the complete anthology at Village Books.