Erika Dreifus

• In the latest newsletter from London’s Jewish Book Week: “With almost 1000 hours of searchable content in our new video library we’ve curated several collections to get you started. Festival Favourites features some of our best-loved speakers. Ahead of her centenary next week, watch Judith Kerr reflect on her extraordinary life and career. Or choose highlights from over the years, from Jonathan Miller in 2009 and Edmund de Waal in 2011 to Afua Hirsch & Helena Kennedy in 2018 and Why Do Jews Love The Godfather from our online festival in 2021. Plus events with Ian McEwan, David Grossman, Elif Shafak, Jonathan Drori & many more. Visit Festival Favourites, or the Video Library home page.” Note also the item about an event honoring Amos Oz (z”l), which begins at 5pm GMT today.
• “As a pre-teen in the 1980s, I worked my way through the long, bottom shelf that held the young adult Holocaust books in my Reform synagogue’s small, dark library in suburban Boston.” Switch out the location (to suburban New Jersey), start in the late 1970s, add another shelf and some better lighting, and I could have written that sentence. But the byline belongs to Julie Brill, and I recommend that you read her essay for Cognoscenti, prompted by the new streaming series A Small Light.
• New addition to our page listing publications where you can read/publish writing on Jewish themes: Yafeh Zine, “a new Jewish magazine project made specifically for queer Jewish people to submit writing, artwork, and photography relating to their Jewish lives,” which is currently open for submissions for its first issue, themed “Beginnings.” Deadline: August 23. More information is available within the call/submission form. (I’ve confirmed that this is a nonpaying opportunity; recall that here on My Machberet, I do share nonpaying calls because the pool for specifically Jewish writing is so much smaller than the sphere for other publications.)
• From the Yiddish Book Center: “In celebration of the Yiddish Book Center’s new core exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture, opening in the fall of 2023, we are seeking translations of Yiddish works that expand the global geography of Yiddish literature to all points south. We are interested in translations of Yiddish works from and about the Southern US, Southern Europe, South America, South Africa, and the Southern Hemisphere. Given the diversity of these regions, we hope to curate accepted translations around different southern regions. Translations may be of any genre: short story, poetry, essay, memoir, drama, etc. Prose submissions should be under 5,000 words. Translators may submit up to 5 poems. The honorarium for prose is $100, regardless of length; the honorarium for poetry is $50 per poem….Submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Publishing will begin in the summer of 2023.”
• From Yetzirah: “This June, our first year of programming culminates with our inaugural summer conference with workshop faculty Rodger Kamenetz, Ilya Kaminsky, and Jacqueline Osherow, and keynote speaker Alicia Ostriker. In partnership with UNC-Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies, a cohort of 36 accomplished poets from around the country, as well as Israel and Curacao, will gather in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, for generative workshops, discussion panels, readings, and a shared celebration of Shabbat. June 21-23, we welcome you—poetry lovers of all traditions—to attend the conference’s public events, online or in-person, and celebrate with us.”

Shabbat shalom.