Translation Grants Available from the Yiddish Book Center

This just in from the Yiddish Book Center:

The Yiddish Book Center will award two grants of $1,000 each for the translation into English of a Yiddish text, from any genre. According to Aaron Lansky, president and founder of the Yiddish Book Center, “less than 2% of Yiddish titles have been translated into English. Most of Yiddish literature is still inaccessible to English readers. The only answer is to train and mobilize a new generation of translators.”

The grant offering is part of a larger translation program at the Yiddish Book Center, including a translation conference, workshops, and plans for new web-based resources.

Application deadline is June 1. To learn more and apply:
http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/translation-grant-program

(I’m looking forward to hearing more about the “larger translation program”!)

Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

  • Having recently read Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key (trans. Damion Searls), I appreciated this profile of the almost-101-year-old author
  • As we conclude National Poetry Month, let’s take a moment to celebrate that remarkable poet from the past, Hannah Senesh. as well as a newer, current poetic voice: that of Yehoshua November.
  • Poet and editor Jill Bialosky is now also the author of a memoir, about her sister’s 1990 suicide, and in this interview she discusses Jewish mourning rituals–and Judaism’s complicated relationship with suicide.
  • Yom Hashoah begins at sundown on Sunday, May 1, and that makes me it seem especially important to share with you today my latest essay-review for Fiction Writers Review: “Looking Backward: Third-Generation Fiction Writers and the Holocaust.”
  • On my other blog, this week’s “post-publication post” provides some background on the real-life inspiration for one of the characters readers are meeting in my short-story collection, Quiet Americans.
  • Shabbat shalom.

    Digital Storytelling: “A Wrinkle In Time,” by Paul Zakrzewski

    Paul Zakrzewski has many literary talents, and to his collection of authorial skills he has recently added digital storytelling. An early result: this short video essay, “A Wrinkle in Time.”

    As Paul explains:

    This short video essay covers a trip to Poland I took with my wife and 13-month-old son. That was in July 2008.

    We spent a week with Genia Olczak, who was my dad’s nanny before WWII and hid him and several other Jewish family members during the Holocaust.

    The film was made in a workshop sponsored by the Center for Digital Storytelling in April 2011.

    Genia passed away in September 2008, a month after our trip. She was 95.

    Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

  • Very proud to share with you my latest poetry publication, a poem titled “Emor,” on the New Vilna Review site.
  • Speaking of poetry, The Forward‘s Arty Semite blog continues its celebration of National Poetry month here.
  • Mazel tov to the winners of this year’s Canadian Jewish Book Awards.
  • Among those appearing in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature (April 25-May 1, 2011, in New York) are Israeli authors Agi Mishol, Yael Hedaya, Asaf Schurr, and Evan Fallenberg.
  • Every time I see the call for applications for Write On for Israel I wish I were in high school again (almost).
  • Yes, you have yet another opportunity to win a free copy of my story collection, Quiet Americans!
  • Something I’ll be working on this weekend: my presentation for an upcoming (May 5) conference here in NYC on “German-Speaking Jews in New York City: Their Immigration and Lasting Presence.”
  • Shabbat shalom!

    Words of the Week: David Breakstone

    “The very best Israel education that money can buy will not assuage [American rabbinical students’] profound sense of estrangement from this country as long as this Jewish state of ours refuses to accept their status as rabbis and legitimize the Judaism of their congregants. As with diplomacy, good pedagogy is no substitute for good policy.”
    –David Breakstone

    See the full, truthful, and sadly important editorial via eJewish Philanthropy.