Elaine Durbach: Fact and Fiction: Exploring Our Changing Truths

Essex Ethical member Elaine Durbach will draw on her experience as a journalist and more recently as a novelist to lead a discussion on how we view our own stories – and how those views change over time as our perspectives shift. Where does our truth lie – in the “facts” of past experience or in the way we interpret them now? Do we learn to see from a broader perspective – perhaps with less certainty – or do we grow more sure about our values and judgments?

Elaine is a Maplewood resident, in fact an Ethical Culture building resident, and has been a member since moving in with her husband Marshall and son Gabriel 16 years ago. She has been a journalist, writing for papers in her home country of South Africa, and in New York and New Jersey. In the past few years she has begun to explore fiction writing, and in September brought out her first novel, “Roundabout”, about a woman reviewing and redefining a lifelong love affair after the death of her partner.