← The Art of Grief

Productive Grief and Writing Across Time with Gil Hochberg

Mar 25, 2026 · 54 min

About this episode

Gil Hochberg, a professor at Columbia University and the author of the new memoir My Father the Messiah (2026), joins us for a discussion of this creative nonfiction text that explores the intersections of  mental illness, religion, queerness, Judaism, Zionism and anti-Zionism. Hochberg reconstructs her relationship with her father through an archive of letters between the two of them, as well as her father's personal writings, painting a tender portrait of family life through which Hochberg's queer identity unfolds alongside her father's mental decline.