Notes from Around the Web: Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat
Shabbat shalom and chag Purim!
Posts Tagged‘Quiet Americans’
Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: An Eventful Season
Spring is coming here in the U.S. Northeast, and with the new season I’m happy to share news about a batch of upcoming events, some of which will focus on my new story collection, Quiet Americans.
On March 26, I’ll be participating with an impressive roster of women poets coordinated by Diane Lockward (who, as I’ve mentioned before, happens to have been one of my sister’s high-school English teachers). This free event, titled “Girl Talk: Women Poets Reading Poems that Celebrate the Lives of Women,” has been designed in honor of Women’s History Month. It will be taking place in West Caldwell, N.J., so I hope to see some of my Garden State friends & family there!
On April 10, I’ll be reading in the Sunday Salon series in New York City. Although not all of the details have been posted, I can tell you that if you come to hear me read, you’ll also get to hear Paul Lisicky and Karen Abbott. (Big thanks to Sara Lippmann for the invitation.)
On April 12, you can “chat” with me online when the Jewish Book Council (JBC) hosts its next Twitter Book Club. (Quiet Americans is the April club title!) To ensure that your tweets show up in the chat stream, be sure that your account has been activated at least a week ahead of time. Not sure what’s involved with a Twitter Book Club? Check the JBC’s instructions and archived chats.
And on April 30, I’ll be up in Boston for Grub Street’s Muse & the Marketplace Conference. Want to learn about opportunities to write about writing (book reviews, author profiles, etc.)? Sign up for my session (#1E)!
I’m very excited about these opportunities to catch up with old friends and meet newer ones face-to face, and to have the chance to converse with readers from around the world online. Please check my News & Events page for updated information about these and other appearances. Many thanks!
P.S. One more thing. The end of March signals the end of the first quarter of the year, and at that point, I’ll be reviewing sales data since January (my publisher’s business model provides monthly royalties) and issuing a check to The Blue Card per my commitment to donate a portion of sales earnings to that organization. This “event” will be private and quiet, but it seems worth sharing nonetheless.
Convergences: Biguenet’s “I Am Not a Jew,” “Mishpocha,” and Arnost Lustig
On February 27, a few hours after I learned of the passing of Arnost Lustig, I listened to a Selected Shorts broadcast featuring John Biguenet’s story, “I Am Not a Jew.” As the series describes it, this is a story “in which a frightened tourist has a failure of nerve that resonates deeply. SHORTS literary commentator Hannah Tinti notes: ‘What makes ‘I Am Not a Jew’ so disturbing is how it dissects the ways we collectively excuse ourselves from standing up for what’s right.'”
It didn’t take long for me to discern that the situation that the tourist faces in Biguenet’s story shares some similarities with an episode described in “Mishpocha,” the closing story in my collection, Quiet Americans. Even before I wrote the story, the episode troubled me enough that I mentioned it in a workshop led by Arnost Lustig. I wrote about this during my January “virtual tour” for Quiet Americans. Since last Sunday, Biguenet’s story–combined with Arnost’s passing–has me thinking about it all over again.
Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: (More than) a Little Help from My Friends
Just after publishing last Thursday’s post, which featured John Kremer’s list of “30 Ways to Help a Book Author You Love,” I became the grateful recipient of still more support and encouragement for my own new story collection, Quiet Americans.
Examples:
- A new acquaintance, following up on an email I’d sent, invited me a) to present a reading/discussion on her college’s campus and b) to participate on a conference panel. (More details about both of these events as they become available.)
- A former colleague, having noticed Josh Lambert’s mention of Quiet Americans online, emailed to ask if I’d like him to query a contact about the possibility of a reading back in Cambridge. My answer: YES, PLEASE (AND THANK YOU!).
- News trickled back to me about a reader who was apparently so caught up in Quiet Americans that, at the conclusion of her New-Jersey-to-New-York train ride, the conductor had to knock on her window from the Penn Station platform to remind her to leave the train. (She’d received the book from a family friend of ours, who had gifted copies to all the members of her Mah Jongg group!)
- And, in a glorious gesture of generosity and friendship, four of my co-workers lured me into an office late one afternoon to surprise me with their four, just-arrived copies of Quiet Americans, which they promptly asked me to autograph. (They were not, by the way, the first co-workers to order the book and surprise me with an autograph request, but they were the first to do so en masse!)
What’s really kind of astonishing is that I doubt that any of these instances resulted from the people involved having read last week’s blog post. I’m just that blessed.
Notes from Around the Web: Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat
Just a few literary links to share with you:
- Publishers Weekly provides an overview of the Jerusalem International Book Fair. (See also my Monday post.)
- Sweet essay on Tablet about one American student’s experience studying in Israel at the same time as Natalie Portman.
- Speaking of Tablet, look who’s talking about Quiet Americans this week!
- From The Jewish Week: A fascinating article by Miriam Intrator on the postwar fate of “Europe’s salvaged Jewish libraries.” And an equally superb piece by Paul Zakrzewski examines the current state of Jewish memoirs.
- Next week will be a challenging one for our friend, Jewish Muse. Here’s why.
- The next Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club, featuring author Andrew Winer and his novel, The Marriage Artist, is scheduled for Wednesday, March 2. Details here.
Shabbat shalom!