Barbara Riddle

Barbara Riddle’s trajectory from a blissfully bohemian childhood in Greenwich Village to Reed College and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Brandeis University was a relatively straight line that disintegrated completely when she abandoned the dream of a scientific career in favor of the mundane (and difficult) realities of life as a writer. Barbara has never regretted that decision—the joys are worth the uncertainty. For more about her, please see the excerpts of Barbara’s memoir.

Barbara’s debut novel, The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke, is a coming-of-age story about a young woman in a lab during the frenetic early days of molecular genetics. It was called “Sharply funny,” by writer Barbara Ehrenreich, who knows from experience what it was like. An award-winning screenplay version by writer/director Laramie Dennis is available on request. 

Currently she is seeking a publisher for her just completed novel, Too Many Countries. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Czech emigre filmmaker Tonda Menzel and his American wife Cait return to Prague and a shocking accusation makes Cait wonder if Tonda is really the man she thought she knew when she fell madly in love 5 years prior. Can their volatile relationship survive yet another shock? How much self-sacrifice should marriage require?