‘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

This concerns ​her work as Writer in Residence at the Baobab Center 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,  sessions were recorded sessions with groups of the hurt young people (aged from 12 to 26 years), using a background in psychology, and long years of experience in teaching and  writing  to work with young asylum seekers silenced by war violence, 
drawing on experience with teaching literature to groups for many years at Birkbeck Extramural Department, London University, Creative Writing at Morley College and City Lit and Script Writing for London Metropolitan University,

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

Theatre journalism includes ‘On Throwing Stones’ (Jewish Quarterly), work 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.


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