Mira Bartók

Myra Herr was born in 1959 to mother Norma Herr.^[1] By the age of four, her father Paul Herr divorced her mother, who had begun showing signs of mental illness. As Herr grew older with her sister Rachel, Norma was diagnosed with schizophrenia and attacked her daughters consistently.^[2] By the time the girls were around 30, Herr and her sister left Norma in their hometown and changed their names and address.^[1] Under the new name of Mira Bartók, she traveled the world to Florence, Lapland, and Israel as a way to escape her mother. She painted in Florence, ran writing workshops in Israel, and earned a Fulbright Scholarship to Lapland.^[3] Until her mother's death in 2007, Bartók only communicated with her through letters sent through post office boxes.^[2]

During the 1990s, Bartók published several children's books on ancient civilizations that focused on their culture.^[4] She later enrolled in the Master's of Fine Arts program at University of Massachusetts Amherst and graduated in 1998.^[5] The following year, she suffered a brain injury causing memory loss when her car was hit by a truck on the New York Thruway.^[6] As a result of the injury, she was unable to complete freelance work and nearly became homeless. She began applying for grants from arts foundations and she received enough funding to sustain her until she began to recover.^[7]