AustLit

Shira Nayman moved with her family to Australia as a small child and was raised in Melbourne, Victoria. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in physiology and psychology with honours from Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, and spent a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem studying literature and history.

Nayman moved to the United States of America where she received a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University. After completing a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in psychology at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Centre, she received a merit scholarship to study English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, earning a masters degree in 1990.

Nayman taught Psychology, English and Comparative Literature in American universities and worked as a psychologist and a marketing consultant. While based in Brooklyn, New York, she also travelled widely in Israel, Mexico, Spain, Holland, Germany and Australia.

Her fiction uses mid-twentieth century settings and psychological detail in a study of the effects of war and violence on the self.

Nayman has also published fiction and non-fiction in a variety of overseas literary journals and newspapers.

Source: Shira Nayman website, http://www.shiranayman.com (Sighted 15/11/2007)