About Gail
I’m passionate about living the creative life and dedicated to writing and storytelling. In my newsletter, Gail’s Art Encounters, I chronicle my creative adventures and share the inspirational stories of other artists and writers. Subscribe to read Gail’s Art Encounters here.
I’m devoted to helping other writers and creative people. That is why I love being a reading coach for authors and helping them use their voice to bring their stories to life. I also enjoy being the president of Willamette Writers, the largest writing organization in the Pacific Northwest, with more than 1300 members.
My short story “Asmodai in Portland,” was published in the anthology New Mitzvah Stories for the Whole Family by Reclaiming Judaism Press, and my short story “Here I Am” was published in the 2021 fall edition of JewishFiction.net. In March of 2021, my travel essay about cocktail bars in London and Paris was published in Wanderlust Journal. I was ordained as a Maggidah, a Jewish storyteller, in August of 2021 and contributed two stories to the anthology The Fruit of Yitzhak’s Tree in 2023.
After twenty years as an educator, I’m at work on a novel, a redemptive story about the relationship between a pansexual female artist and a Hollywood film star.
As an active member of the Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective, I collaborate with fellow Maggidah to tell stories about women and celebrate the female voice. We are currently compiling a collection of stories with female protagonists, which will be published in 2025.
My husband and I live in Portland, where our date nights are filled with trying new restaurants and cocktail bars or listening to live jazz or just hanging out with our dog, Leeta.
Work in Progress
Work in Progress
In New York’s world of art, movies, celebrities, and drag queens, Blake, a Hollywood icon, stands out, as does Ada, a lesser-known artist. But when you’re famous, or with someone who is, and when the public has commodified not just art but also the artist, how can you trust that others see the real you, and not the flat media projection? Blake and Ada each want nothing more than to have their talent acknowledged, but they need to be seen, understood, and valued for who they are as three-dimensional people. And maybe even be loved, if they can get past feeling that they don’t deserve it.
This is the essence of Flattened, Gail’s novel-in-progress, which her agent, Elisa Saphier of MacGregor & Luedeke Literary, has sent out on submission.
Gail is also collaborating with other Maggidah to host storytelling events in Portland and to compile a collection of women’s stories. Sign up for her newsletter to get further announcements on these projects.
Bio
Gail Pasternack is a writer and an ordained Maggidah (Jewish storyteller) who tells re-envisioned folktales and contemporary stories. Her writing has appeared in Wanderlust Journal, Jewish Fiction.net, the New Mitzvah Stories for the Whole Family anthology, and the anthology The Fruit of Yitzhak’s Tree. She has served on the Willamette Writers Board of Directors since 2015, and in 2019, she stepped up to provide leadership for the organization as President of the Board. As a founding member of the Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective, she works with other Maggidah to create and tell stories from the female perspective. Their first anthology of female stories will be published in 2025. Gail holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a masters from Columbia University. A native New Yorker, she now lives with her husband and her dog, Leeta, in Portland, Oregon where she enjoys drinking cocktails, listening to live jazz, and dancing Argentine tango.
