Erika Dreifus

• Every section of Rachel Barenbaum’s just-released second novel, Atomic Anna, begins with an epigraph from Pirkei Avot. In this essay for the Jewish Book Council’s PB Daily blog, the author explains why that is.
• The Role Model Project at Moment Magazine is sponsoring an essay contest for high-schoolers (grades 9-12). The contest asks entrants to select one woman profiled in RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone by Nadine Epstein (with an introduction and selection by Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and “tell us why this woman inspired you.” (A list of the women’s names is provided online.) A first-place prize of $118 and a second-place prize of $54 will be awarded; winning essays will be published on the Moment website. There is no fee to enter. Deadline: May 15.
• Applications for the next Genesis Jewish Book Week Emerging Writers Programme are open until May 31. “The Programme is open to emerging writers over 18 years of age and living in the UK with no more than three years’ experience of being published. Applications are invited for projects in the fields of Fiction, Non-Fiction (including journalism) and Poetry. The programme offers bursaries of up to £1,500, mentorship, peer-support and a programme of writing seminars to ten emerging writers of any background. Applicants should be working, or planning to work, on a specific project, with the aim of publication. Mentors for the 2022-2023 cohort include Bidisha, Philip Hensher, Charlotte Mendelson, Ruth Padel, Clare Pollard and Jack Underwood.” There is no fee to apply.
• The TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for translation from Hebrew to English will be awarded in 2023. The triennial award “is sponsored by the Porjes Trust in association with the Times Literary Supplement and administered by the Jewish Book Council in association with the Society of Authors. The prize of £2,000 will be awarded to the winning translator of a full-length book of general interest and literary merit, published in English, between January 2019 and December 2021, although the original may be from any period. The winner will be announced in the TLS and the prize will be awarded at the Society of Authors Literary Translation Prize ceremony in February 2023, to be held at the British Library.” There is no fee to enter. Deadline: June 22.
• And this week brought the publication of an interview with me that begins with a look back at a short story I published a number of years ago. That story, “The Kiss,” is set during a post-B’nai Mitzvah celebration. If you haven’t yet read the story, there’s a link to it early in the interview.

Shabbat shalom.