Benick’s fiction and nonfiction explore the experience of newcomers and their transition from one world to another. Her work focuses on memory, intergenerational trauma, and the costs as well as the benefits of not remembering.
Fiction
Memory’s Shadow. (Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2021).
The Girl Who Was Born That Way (Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2015).
“The Pickle Cellar,” Parchment.Contemporary Canadian Jewish Writing, No. 16 (2014).
“Hawkeye,” Jewish Fiction.net (December, 2012)
Recent Nonfiction
“The woman who changed Holocaust studies forever,” The Canadian Jewish News (December 22, 2016)
“A letter to my sixteen year old self,” Women Writing Letters, Celebrating the Art (Toronto: Galley Road Publications, 2015)
“The orphan in me,” Living Legacies. Vol. 5 (2015)
“Digital Storytelling and Diasporic Identities in Higher Education,” Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, vol. V (2012)
“Digital Storytelling and the Pedagogy of Human Rights,” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, vol. 29 (2011)
Reviews
Review of The Girl Who Was Born That Way, The Canadian Jewish News, January 31, 2016
“Benick has compactly shown the complexities of migrating to a foreign land with few belongings and resources and many differences. She tells the story honestly, sensitively and with lots of heart.”
Review of Memory’s Shadow in The Jerusalem Report, January 24, 2022
“A gripping American novel in the shadow of the Shoah….This is a novel to read, enjoy, and ponder over.”
Review of Memory’s Shadow in St. Louis Jewish Light, September 23, 2021
“A gripping novel that traces how three generations of Holocaust survivors deal with the never-ending trauma of the Shoah.”