Edith S Lambert

My dear reader, you are not prepared for this.

I have published a collection of my writings. Those who know me might expect a volume of erudite theological insights. No.

The title might suggest a journal of introspection—a voyage of self-discovery in the tradition of Flannery O’Connor or Anaïs Nin. Wrong again.

I write from a world of desert silence—a silence so loud it can be deafening, as anyone who has experienced it knows. It was there that I discovered my night voice: the voice that speaks in a language I rarely use in daylight, for fear of being misunderstood.

My night voice carries dreams, secret secrets, unruly memories, peculiar observations, and the occasional truth wearing a very convincing disguise. It allows me to call things as I see them in my universe, through the lens of my reality and in a vocabulary entirely my own. The result can be whimsical, unsettling, absurd—and wonderfully prone to misunderstanding.

Most readers may not be prepared for these wild concoctions. But once they have sampled the juicy narratives, they will certainly have something new to talk about.

I leave it to others to write about the normative, the expected, and the comfortably familiar. My writing lives elsewhere. My night voice ventures out because the desert is shrinking, I am moving closer to the horizon, and daylight looms large. These stories, essays, and one-liners tickle my fancy and invite readers to ask: Where on earth is she coming from?

I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, but wanderlust carried me onward. Along the way, I made homes in New York, New Mexico, Chicago, and California—and collected enough lived experience for several people.

I have been a women’s apparel buyer for major department stores, an art dealer, a cloistered nun, a hospice chaplain, a grief counselor, a grammar-school teacher, and a case manager and companion to young adults with developmental disabilities. Each vocation gave me another window through which to observe the tender, mystical, heartbreaking, and frequently absurd business of being human.

I earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Education from Northeastern University, a master’s degree in theological studies from Boston College, and a graduate certificate with distinction in patient advocacy from UCLA Extension.

I now live in California’s Bay Area, where I continue to write, wonder, wander, and serve as a mikveh guide for Jews by choice.