Erika Holzer
Encyclopedia
Erika Holzer is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist and essayist who was a member of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

's inner circle. Her novel Eye for an Eye
Eye For An Eye
Eye for an Eye is a Polish hardcore punk rock band founded in 1997 in Bielsko-Biała. EFAE, as it is also known, plays an old school style of punk, more along the veins of The Exploited or even, some say, Agnostic Front. The punk stylings of EFAE has been compared to fellow countrymen Post Regiment,...

was the basis for a major motion picture of the same name. She has also co-authored two nonfiction books with her husband, professor of law Henry Mark Holzer.

Career

Erika and her husband "Hank," both lawyers, were students of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

's philosophy of Objectivism
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 during the 1960s. In 1966 Erika and Rand, who was a best-selling novelist, began what would become a series of discussions about the art of writing. Henry Mark Holzer became Rand's personal attorney.

In the late 1960s, the Holzers managed to track down an original negative, thought to have been destroyed, of a 1942 Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 two-part film which had been adapted from Ayn Rand's first novel We the Living
We the Living
We the Living is the first novel published by the Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand. It was also Rand's first statement against communism. First published in 1936, it is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Rand observes in the foreword to this book that We the Living was the closest she...

. Erika helped Duncan Scott restore the film, edit it under Rand's guidance, and write English subtitles for the 1986 re-release of the film.

Encouraged by Rand, Erika embarked upon a new career as a writer; her first novel, Double Crossing, received critical acclaim and was a finalist for the 1984 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. The plot revolves around the conflict between two brothers born in the Soviet Union, one becoming a powerful official in the Soviet police and the other secretly planning his escape from the Communist regime.

Her second novel, Eye for an Eye, was published in 1993. Its plot centers on a mother who joins a vigilante
Vigilante
A vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....

 group after the criminal justice system releases her daughter's murderer. In 1996 Paramount Pictures released a film adaptation (also titled Eye for an Eye); Erika was not involved with the film production.

She has also given interviews and written numerous essays for Objectivist
Objectivist movement
The Objectivist movement is a movement to study and advance the philosophy of Objectivism. It was founded by novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead...

, Libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

, and Conservative Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 sites.

Human rights

As lawyers, the Holzers have been involved in several pro bono
Pro bono
Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...

cases, most notably the struggle of the 12-year old defector
Defection
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state or political entity in exchange for allegiance to another. More broadly, it involves abandoning a person, cause or doctrine to whom or to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.This term is also applied,...

 Walter Polovchak
Walter Polovchak
Walter Polovchak is a Ukrainian-American who, as a child, became the center of the legal case Polovchak v. Meese after refusing to leave Chicago, Illinois and return to Ukraine in the Soviet Union with his parents when he was 12....

 to avoid being forcibly returned to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. Another case resulted in political asylum being granted to two defectors from a Rumanian circus.

Articles

. Book review.. Anti-intellectualism in Hollywood, illustrated by the movies Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....

, Charly
Charly
Charly is a 1968 American film directed by Ralph Nelson. The drama stars Cliff Robertson , Claire Bloom, Lilia Skala, Leon Janney and Dick Van Patten and tells the story of a mentally retarded bakery worker who is the subject of an experiment to increase human intelligence...

, and 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...

.

Novels

A Soviet doctor tries to escape to the West by exchanging identities with an American. A woman turns to a vigilante group for justice after the legal system fails her.

Nonfiction books

Argues that Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...

's activities in North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...

 would support indictment and conviction for treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

. Subtitled "Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service", specifically concerning the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. Insight into Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

's ideas about fiction writing; includes Erika's short stories and writing exercises.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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