Education:

• BA: University of Wisconsin
• MA: University of Chicago
• PhD: University of Illinois

Publications:

• original work in Monatshefte, German Quarterly, American Indian Quarterly, elsewhere
• translations in Asymptote, Fictionable, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Theater Magazine, MOCAK, University of California Press, University of Illinois Press, elsewhere

Employment:

On-and-off professor of English, German, Humanities at public and private universities (University of Illinois, City Colleges of Chicago, North Central College, East-West University)

Lebenslauf: The Run for My Life

I like the German word for CV–Lebenslauf–literally the run for your life. The course your life has taken. Traditionally, written by hand in cursive, the Lebenslauf was penned in narrative form, telling the tale of your life from birth onward. It had contour enough to put accomplishments and failures into context.

A couple years ago, I was invited to write a guest blog that felt a little like a Lebenslauf. The piece, “Careful What You Look Like” details only one snapshot from a life lived on three continents in as many languages, and across the whole economic spectrum: from welfare class to millionaire’s “daughter.” Not “looking the part” has been a constant over the now sixty-plus year run which threatened to come to a swift close almost a decade ago, but didn’t.

Since 2017, the material reality of an expiration date has hung over my head: six months to a year they said, and assigned me to a palliative oncologist.

December 2017. Stage IV lung cancer, metastasized to my brain.

Dec 6, 2017: Results of a cranial MRI read: “These findings are compatible with metastatic disease … .” All our phones began ringing off the hook. As instructed, we raced to the ER where we were greeted by a team of oncologists.

On Dec 8, a neurosurgeon removed a 2 cm metastatic lesion. At the first post-op visit, I quipped: “I suppose you’re here to talk to me about the approximate size of my favorite tumor?” That’s the title of short story by Sherman Alexie. The refrain became a long-standing joke between me and hospital staff during my week-long stay. After my discharge, I returned to deliver a bag of treats that included a copy of Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for the break room.

Indian humor. It’s not for everyone. But the work of Sterlin Harjo and others has given us permission to laugh again.

In January 2018, they screwed a steel frame onto my head and stuck me in a gammaknife radiation chamber for a couple hours to knock out the remaining lesions. After that, chemo, radiation, more chemo, more radiation. Finally, immunotherapy. The treatment was “experimental” at the time. Now it’s first-line standard of care for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.

Truth be told: cancer has been kind. Statistically, I’m not supposed to be here. Others have fared far worse with this disease, most of them are dead.

Even before the cancer journey, my life was anything but a straight-line run. Telling the whole truth about a life like mine is risky business. Because you don’t get “extra credit” for having pulled yourself up by non-existent bootstraps, or for overcoming obstacles few others in your income/education bracket have known.

Imposter syndrome is real, the playgrounds where you never fit in are never far away and the biggest bully you’ll ever stare down is yourself. A shrink once looked at my CV and asked: “You don’t believe any of this is real, do you?”

People with my background aren’t supposed to live the life I’ve led. When we do, we’re expected to pretend we didn’t. Things can get hairy when we get caught “oversharing”– pinching ourselves in public, trying to make it real.

Most recently, I’ve been collaborating with Aaron M. Sayne, a translator I first met in the early 2000s, when we struck up conversation based on shared interest in Elfriede Jelinek. For years, we’d been reading and providing mutual feedback on each other’s work. In 2024, we formalized our collaboration as a translator team with the publication of a short story by Helga Schubert (Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, 2020). Schubert’s “On Getting Up” appeared in the British literary journal, Fictionable in Winter, 2024.

Our collaboration has continued since then, with one highlight being Johanna Sebauer’s delightful story “Pickeled” published in Asymptote in January 2025. We’ve got a few irons in the fire, and hope to report on more good news soon.

* Publications, education and employment history through 2011 under the name Lilian M. Friedberg.