Pamela Reitman grew up in Minneapolis and Boston and attended Barnard College in New York before hitchhiking to the Yukon and back, landing in California's most remote schoolhouse. At the end of the road that runs along the Klamath River toward the coast, at the extreme end of the Yurok Extension of the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, she taught K-3 in Pecwan's two-teacher schoolhouse. From there she moved to San Francisco, where she ran and repaired printing presses for eight years, making her migration to the West Coast permanent. After graduating with a master's degree from UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, she began her professional career for the City and County of San Francisco and then the state of California, controlling toxic chemicals in the workplace and the environment. Pamela also served five years as Director of Makor Or: a Jewish Meditation Center. She has run support groups for people who have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s and, more recently, for people living with mental illness and their families.
Pamela is seeking representation for A Day Called Yesterday, which was a Finalist in the 2013 Nilsen Literary Prize for First Novel. It is a story about a woman with Alzheimer’s who loses her mind but finds her soul. Also, for her memoir about a woman who sets out to save her son from mental illness and finds the only one she can save is herself.
This year her story, “The Bridge,” was a Semi-Finalist in the New Millennium Writings Contest. Her works have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines. She lives with her husband in San Francisco.