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Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by on Friday, February 17, 2012 (2) Comments

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

  • This week, one of the little ones in Auntie Erika’s life turned 8, and as per usual, he received a birthday gift of a book. I sent him Richard Michelson’s Lipman Pike: America’s First Home Run King, which was recently named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Young Readers. Check out this interview with Mr. Michaelson (part of the latest blog tour featuring Sydney Taylor Award titles).
  • The above-mentioned interview pointed me to Richard Michaelson’s website, where I discovered this essay Michaelson published some years back, on writing outside one’s own racial/cultural experience.
  • Win a copy of Joan Leegant’s wonderful novel, Wherever You Go.
  • Chas Newkey-Burden (“OyVaGoy”), presents a list of recommended books about Israel.
  • Terrific essay by Sara Ivry for Tablet on a Judy Blume classic, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself.
  • The Jewish Book Council has announced the winner and runner-up for this year’s Sami Rohr Prize: “This year’s prize is for non-fiction and is awarded to journalist Gal Beckerman. His book, When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of the history of the Soviet Jewry movement. The judges believe Beckerman’s work shows ‘his clear commitment to becoming a storyteller for the Jewish people.’ This is Beckerman’s first book. The runner-up is Oxford lecturer Abigail Green, for her biography, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Belknap Press of Harvard University). She receives a $25,000 prize.”
  • Sample excerpts (translated by Jessica Cohen) from Israeli author Alex Epstein’s forthcoming collection, For My Next Illusion I Will Use Wings.
  • You’ll find a (somewhat overwhelming) list of intriguing new titles in Jewish fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in The Jewish Week‘s spring arts preview.
  • And as London’s Jewish Book Week celebrates its 60th anniversary, it attempts to list 60 great Jewish books of the past six decades.

    • Shabbat shalom!

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    Paired Writing Contests on “The Catskills and the Holocaust”

    by on Sunday, February 05, 2012 (2) Comments

    I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before: paired writing contests–one in fiction and one in nonfiction–as part of a book project, Summer Haven: How the Catskills Experienced the Holocaust, edited by Holli Levitsky, Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and Phil Brown, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University, “which will provide a locus for literature exploring the experience of the Holocaust in the Catskills.”

    Clicking the link above, you’ll find much more explanation about these contests. I’ll just give you some basics: no entry fees indicated and deadlines of July 1, 2012. For each contest, the winner will receive $500 and up to $500 for travel costs to present the work at the November 2012 Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium in Miami. Winning works will also be published in the Levitsky/Brown book.

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, February 03, 2012 (0) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

  • Thanks to the Jewish Book Council for taking note of the Sophie Brody Medal news in its latest JLit Links post! (By the way, for a response to the kidlit link included in that post, see The PJ Library.)

  • And speaking of kids’ books: Marjorie Ingall writes about Holocaust books for children.
  • And still more about Jewish kidlit: ‘Tis the season for the Sydney Taylor Book Award interviews. Get to know some award-winning authors and illustrators February 5-10.
  • The American Jewish Historical Society has redesigned its website. I hope to spend some time exploring it soon.
  • Finally, a reading rec from my mom. She just finished reading The Arrogant Years, the new memoir from Lucette Lagnado, and she LOVED it. I haven’t read it yet, but I did think Lagnado’s previous book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, was pretty terrific.

    • Shabbat shalom!

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, January 27, 2012 (0) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

  • Two fabulous Twitter book club titles coming up from the Jewish Book Council: in February, Anna Solomon’s The Little Bride; in March, Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.
  • Tablet summarizes all the latest Jewish book award news (and then some).
  • Author Rachel Kadish writes about Hala Salah Eldin Hussein, an editor/translator in Cairo, “and the connection we’ve forged through working together.”
  • Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
  • Pleased and grateful to receive two gifts–both inscribed–in the mail this week: William C. Donahue’s Holocaust as Fiction: Bernhard Schlink’s Nazi Novels and Their Films, and Anthony Levin’s House of the Collective Unconscious, a new poetry collection.
  • If you haven’t yet seen Andrew Lustig’s remarkable video piece on “What It Means to Be a Jew,” you must.

    • Shabbat shalom.

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    QUIET AMERICANS Is a Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title

    by on Monday, January 23, 2012 (4) Comments

    I learned some amazing news last night via Google Alert: Quiet Americans has been named a 2012 Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title. The Sophie Brody recognition is deeply meaningful, because it “is given to encourage, recognize and commend outstanding achievement in Jewish literature.”

    I may have more to say once the news sinks in. For now, I’ll just quote from the announcement. And say “THANK YOU!” to the judges.

    “‘Quiet Americans: Stories’ by Erika Dreifus (Last Light Studio Books): This little book of short stories is a gem that anyone can read and enjoy. Its straightforward writing and understandable stories about German Jews and their descendants bring us into the everyday lives of Jewish Americans. Some stories are interrelated, but they stand alone in their own right.”

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