Lit Event Next Week in Brooklyn

To be held Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 7 p.m., at Greenlight Bookstore.

“As part of the Beatrice.com author/blogger pairings hosted by the Greenlight Bookstore, please join us as Jacob Paul speaks about his debut novel, Sarah/Sara with Sara Ivry of Tablet Magazine.

An engrossing meditation on the meaning of faith, Sarah/Sara is the story of a young Orthodox Jewish woman who undertakes a solo kayaking journey across the Arctic Ocean after her parents are killed and she is disfigured by a terrorist bomb in a Jerusalem café. Haunted by her parents’ death, and in particular by memories of her father, a 9/11 survivor whose dream was to kayak through the Arctic, Sarah embarks on her expedition unprepared for the strenuous physical and emotional trial that lies ahead. What begins as a series of diary entries on her struggle with faith ends in a fight for survival, as Sarah slowly comes to realize that she is lost in the Arctic wilderness with the ice closing in around her.

Jacob Paul teaches at the University of Utah, where he earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. A 9/11 World Trade Center survivor, he won the 2008 Utah Writers’ Contest, and the 2007 Richard Scowcroft Prize.”