“My parents were first cousins,” Fruma Klass says, “and I moved in family like a fish moves in water.” Born in Boston, raised in New York, and a graduate of The Bronx High School of Science, Fruma has been a lab technician, a medical editor, and a teacher of writing at Penn State. She has been married to Phil Klass, who writes science fiction under the pen name of William Tenn, since 1957.

Fruma is a freelance copyeditor (for the income) and a writer of fiction (for God, she says). Fruma's first story, “Before the Rainbow,” appeared in the anthology “Synergy 3,” in 1988. Its sequel, “After the Rainbow,” won a Writers of the Future second prize and appears in “Writers of the Future Vol. XII“ (1996). Her story “Jennifer’s Turn” appeared in “Gathering the Bones” (Tor Books, 2003). Her most recent story is “Two More for Tolstoi,” due out in “Synergy 5” in Fall 2004. She is currently at work on a novel.

The time: a hundred years ago. The place: a “Fiddler-on-the-Roof” kind of town, but in its squalid, starveling reality. The family: intent on coming to America, with no money, no resources outside themselves, and only an overwhelming sense of purpose to direct them.

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