‘Unpack my Heart with Words’: Reading and  Writing as a Health Intervention for Traumatised Children,Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers , (Hatchards, July 2014)

_Presented at Culture, Conflict and Creativity, 15th European Symposium in Group Analysis, 2011

Marion’s most recent book concerns her work as Writer in Residence at the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, with a brief for using literature as an intervention for health for traumatised young asylum seekers and refugees. Over a period of four years, she gave and recorded sessions with groups of the hurt young people (aged from 12 to 26 years), using her background in psychology, and long years of experience in teaching literature, and writing her own plays and short stories, she began to work with young asylum seekers ‘silenced’ by war violence, which led to her decision to research  the subject and to write about her discoveries on literature and writing as a therapeutic intervention with young war victims. 

Marion drew on her experience with teaching literature to groups for many years at Birkbeck Extramural Department, London University, and Creative Writing at Morley College and City Lit. she aslo taught Script Writing at London Metropolitan Univeristy,

She was selected for the Paul Hamlyn Writers in Schools Project (2008), a research project on the effectiveness of writers in schools,  where she taught the making of a graphic novel.


Reviews
[This] book explores the ways in which the combined activities of thinking with others about written stories, exploring feelings, ideas and memories that emerge and then writing on the themes explored, can help young people to process both destructive and nourishing experiences... I hope that its publication will lead to others learning the skills to work in such an energetic, careful and creative way with young refugees and asylum seekers in various contexts.'
- from the foreword by Sheila Melzak, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Executive and Clinical Director of Baobab Centre

'The stars of Unpack My Heart with Words are four survivors of war and abuse whose words thread through Marion Baraitser's narrative. Offering both theory and practice, she takes us on an insightful journey as she delicately encourages these traumatised young people to respond to selected literature through dialogue and writing. I have a better understanding now of the term 'therapeutic resilience' and huge admiration for the Baobab Centre, its community of young survivors and therapeutic workers.'
- Beverley Naidoo, author of The Other Side of Truth, Carnegie Medal 2000


Journalism

Marion’s theatre journalism includes ‘On Throwing Stones’ (Jewish Quarterly), on the playwright Joshua Sobol who defied the right-wing restrictions of writing theatre plays in Israel, and on Nadine Gordimer (Jewish Quarterly), and many newspaper articles

Play translations   
                     
Twelve Women in a Cell  by Nawaal El Saadawi 
co-translated with Cheryl Robson published in Plays by Mediterranean Women, edited by Marion Baraitser (Aurora Metro Press)
Veronica, Courtesan Poet by Dacia Maraini (Aurora Metro Press), co-translated with Cheryl Robson.


Her article on Dolly City (Orly Castel-Bloom) appears in Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century (ed. Sorrel Kerbel)