Miriam Gold
Author/Illustrator
Agent
Associate Agent
Biography
Miriam Gold’s debut book Elena: A Hand Made Life was in The Guardian and The Observer’s best of the year list in 2024 and the Graphic Novel of the Month upon publication in The Observer, and shortlisted for the Wingate Prize. Her next book, The Disappearing Woman also a graphic novel, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2027. Miriam has completed international residencies and been commissioned by the V&A and the Barbican, and was selected for the Emerging Writer Programme at the London Library. She teaches art and photography in London, where she lives with her family.
Elena: A Hand Made Life
Lives were bent in the furnaces of the twentieth century, but Elena Zadik was unbroken. With a stethoscope, a jar of herring and a hearing aid occasionally switched on, she forged an extraordinary life. Elena ran through the twentieth century without looking back.
A refugee twice before she was 17, she broke glass ceilings to become a doctor during World War 2. She was as brilliant a doctor as she was terrible a driver (she never took a test). Finding community, falling in love and starting a family in Sheffield while her parents were imprisoned and killed in Auschwitz, she swam against the odds with courage and tenacity.
Miriam gathers the threads of her Granny’s story, reflecting on their unconventional relationship and how trauma travels down through the generations in this gorgeous brocade of illustration and collage.
Granny was an unintentionally hilarious woman, often difficult, always opinionated and deeply resourceful. Her hands were always busy and form the heart of this timely, irresistible graphic story of the ordinary extraordinary resilience of women.
A heartfelt and charming graphic memoir of love, family and fearless women.
