
Elana Shira Segal
Writer inspired by narratives of people's lives
PUBLICATIONS

Forward Go
"It is said that the death rate slightly increases every year around the Jewish New Year. Some speculate that it is part of the “Who shall live and who shall die” theme of the high holidays. Monty Finkelman understands this. He lost his wife, Minna, to cancer three years ago, four days before Rosh Hashana. Then, last year, his twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Steph, was crushed under the weight of a garbage truck that hadn’t seen her bicycle turning on to Bloor Street." Now Monty is alone and stuck in his grief, and he wonders what the point is to anything. An unexpected knock at his door on the eve of Rosh Hashana might be the beginning of a change for Monty. Will he finally be ready to take a small step forward?
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Harachaman
"I spent my childhood at Beth Tikvah Synagogue, when families traveled in boat-sized station wagons without seatbelts, and polyester was a fabric of choice." Many years later, when life turned dark, I returned to my community and my shule and sought comfort from the familiar place of my childhood.

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Ole

It was only a silly, old sombrero that her father would wear every Halloween, but it gave her a window into her father's love for her when she otherwise might not have felt it.
BIO

Elana Shira Segal is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She studied writing at The Humber School for Writers and The Sarah Selecky Writing School. Outside of writing, she does ceramics and works as a therapist.
Elana is passionate about words and finding just the right turn of phrase to convey a moment or a feeling. As a therapist, she has spent her life working with people to help them understand the narratives that inform their lives. Through writing, she creates and imagines the lives of her characters and shapes their narratives into meaningful, impactful stories.
