Terisa Folaron

History: I have been fixated with the Holocaust since I was a little girl. I met my first survivor at the sage old age of ten. As an adult I've studied the complex relationships of perpetrators and victims within the camps. I believe the roles of perpetrator and victim exist innately within all of us. I received my BA in English (Creative Writing & the Holocaust) in 2003. If there is any relevance, I was born in Germany.

I recently returned to the United States after living in Southeast Asia for a year and half. There I visited several genocide sites (The most startling being Cambodia, where the young outnumber their elders due to Pol Pot's purges. It was there in Siem Reap, at the end of a killing era, that I more clearly understood what the word "genocide" meant). In Shanghai, I walked the historical streets of the Jewish Ghetto of Hongkou. It was also in China where I met and began my work with poet Frances Driscoll, author of The Rape Poems. Working with Driscoll helped me hone in my own style of Holocaust poetry. I am currently working on completing a non-fiction book, Letters From Liberty, 1945 - an epistolary work based on the letters from a 22-year-old woman who was writing her Pacific-stationed betrothed in 1945 - the end of WWII. I owned and operated two experimental art galleries in Milwaukee, WI from 1999-2003.

Project Statement: Creating and participating in The Dystopia Project means actively remembering war atrocities, paying tribute to the artists of the camps, and encouraging today's artists to witness and interpret the wartime world around them.

Recommended Reading: A Problem From Hell – America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Powers, Maus I & Maus II by Art Spiegelman, Embracing Defeat : Japan in the wake of WWII by John Dower, The War Against Jews 1933-1945 by Lucy Dawidowicz