Bel Kaufman

Bel Kaufman, Professor and Author, was one of our distinguished speakers.

Bel Kaufman is a Russian-American professor and author, best known for writing the 1965 best-seller Up the Down Staircase.

Kaufman was born in Berlin, Germany, where her father was studying medicine. Although born in Germany, her native language was Russian; she was raised in Odessa (Ukraine, then a part of Russia). While still a child, Bella published her first poem, "Spring", in the Odessa magazine "Little Bells". Bella immigrated to the United States in 1923 at the age of 12 with her parents, moving to New York City, where she first began learning the English language. At age 18 she attended Hunter College in New York, from which she received a BA degree, then pursued a Master's degree at Columbia University. She then began work as a teacher in various New York City high schools, along with working part-time as a writer. In 1965 she published the novel Up the Down Staircase, a novel about an idealistic young honors college graduate who becomes an English teacher in a New York City high school and deals with the gritty realities of her colleagues and students; it was based on Kaufman's own teaching experiences. Up the Down Staircase became an enormous success, remaining on the New York Times Best Seller list for 64 weeks. In 1967, the book was turned into a film of the same name.

In 1979 Kaufman published a second novel, Love, etc.. She has since then written various short stories. She has also continued as a teacher and lecturer.

Kaufman has written, "I do not LIKE writing; in truth, I HATE writing, and would rather do anything else. But the joy comes when, almost in spite of myself, I come close to what I want to say. A sentence or an insight leaps from the page."

Kaufman is the granddaughter of famed Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem.(R. Marder 2001), who helped her see the world with the eye of an inquiring author.