Erika Dreifus

Three brief updates.

1. This time last week, I was telling you about a webinar I was planning to attend later in the day.

Readers, I attended said webinar. And I was blown away.

How is it possible that, given my immersion in short fiction and in Holocaust-related fiction, I had never before encountered Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s “Address Unknown”? The epistolary work, which unfolds between 1932 and 1934, was published initially in Story magazine in 1938. It is a stunning work in its own right—and I want to know so much more about it (again, with a focus on why it seems to be so under-recognized).

While I map out where I might go from here (I would love, love, love to write about this), I remain immensely grateful to librarian Lisa Silverman and the American Jewish University’s “Keep Calm and Read On” programming for introducing me to the work.

2. Yes, I am spending a lot of time online. Here are some of the literary events—launches, panels, and so forth—that I’ve been most looking forward to.

3. Had Birthright: Poems received just one new (and generous!) review this past week: Dayenu! But there have been two. The first—which suggests linkages to Emma Lazarus(!!!)—is written by Joanna Chen for Reading Jewish Fiction (a site that, name notwithstanding, occasionally features guest poetry reviews). The second, which came to my attention just yesterday, is a contribution from Chava Pinchuk for the Association of Jewish Libraries’ News & Reviews membership publication—I can’t supply a link for this one, but I’ll quote the closing line: “Highly recommended for libraries that collect poetry, this quintessentially Jewish poetry collection would work well in the classroom or with a reading group.” How wonderful is that???