Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenThere is so much excellent content to share with you this week. Let’s get right to it.
First, one of the books I’m anticipating with considerable interest this fall is Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid. Boianjiu, an Israeli, wrote the book in English. This week, The New Yorker published an excerpt as well as a Web-only Q&A with the author.
Next: You’ve seen me mention JewishFiction.net here before. This week, The Whole Megillah ran a Q&A with JewishFiction.net’s editor, Dr. Nora Gold. I was especially impressed by Gold’s pride in her journal’s “high level of inclusiveness and diversity….For years I have been deeply concerned about the divisions, divisiveness, and polarizations within the Jewish world: between the different streams of Judaism, between religious/secular, left/right, Ashkenazi/Mizrahi, and Israel/Diaspora, to name just a few. So in Jewish Fiction.net we have made a point of publishing fiction by authors who are secular and religious (“religious” encompassing all streams of Judaism), right- and left-wing, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, old and young, female and male, economically privileged and disadvantaged, community-affiliated and community-alienated, LGBTI and straight, and from Israel and the Diaspora. It is our hope that, in this way, Jewish Fiction.net can help bring Jews together in spite of the differences between us. We all have a common language as Jews, and Jewish literature belongs to all of us. So Jewish Fiction.net is a place where all Jewish voices can be heard.”
Superb Tablet essay by a young woman currently on a Birthright trip in Israel, regarding her experiences with anti-Semitism (yes, here in the United States! in the 21st century!).
In case you missed it, Linda K. Wertheimer has curated an especially strong Jewish Book Carnival this month.
Attention, graduate students! Administered by the Philip Roth Society, “[t]he Siegel/McDaniel Award recognizes high-quality work from graduate students written on any aspect of Philip Roth’s writing in the past year (ending June 1). We recommend that faculty urge strong students to submit papers and we welcome submissions from members and non-members alike.” There’s no entry fee indicated, and the deadline is September 1, 2012. “The winner of the Siegel/McDaniel Award receives: 1) a $250 cash award; 2) a complimentary one-year membership (or renewal) in the Philip Roth Society, including a year’s subscription to Philip Roth Studies; and 3) an opportunity to work with the editor of Philip Roth Studies to publish an expanded version of the essay in the journal.”
