Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

Every Friday My Machberet presents an array of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Over on Tablet, Adam Kirsch examines “where Jewish writers are finding [publishing] homes these days, and why.”
  • Speaking of Tablet: they’re looking for two paid, part-time fall editorial interns. (Don’t forget: Fig Tree Books is offering a paid internship as well.)
  • Spotlighting debut novels by Michelle Brafman and Diana Bletter, The Jewish Week‘s Sandee Brawarsky declares this to be “the summer of the chevra kadisha novel.”
  • I’ve followed poet Edward Hirsch’s work for many years; I read his book-length elegy for his son when it was published last year. So I appreciated this profile of Hirsch—and Gabriel—in the current issue of Moment magazine.
  • Finally, in the words of JTA/Suzanne Pollak, “In Jennifer Weiner’s hit novels, it’s a (Jewish) woman’s world.” (But many of you knew that already!)

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer

    by Erika Dreifus on
    1

    I won’t lie. It hasn’t been the brightest week.

    Alan Cheuse, 1940-2015

    Alan Cheuse
    Alan Cheuse

    Last Friday afternoon came the sad news of Alan Cheuse’s passing. Very shortly thereafter, I went to work on a statement for the Fig Tree Books website. You can read it here. But I’ll point you also to a couple of online appreciations and tributes I’ve found especially memorable: Bethanne Patrick for Lit Hub and Susan Stamberg for NPR.

    Most of all, though—and turning to happier thoughts—I’ll point you to one of Alan’s essays about his own writing life and to his recent interview with Michael Silverblatt of KCRW (I loved this conversation when I listened in at the time), so you can figuratively and literally hear Alan’s voice. (more…)

    Sunday Sentence

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
    Alan Cheuse
    Alan Cheuse

    In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

    You may have read about an imaginary Southern piece of turf where the past presses on the present with such force that characters find themselves transformed with the pressure of it, where the landscape comes alive, where human beings seem sometimes like gods and sometimes like devils, and the language of the story lights up your mind: William Faulkner’s half-historical, half-fabulized Yoknapatawpha County, yes?

    Source: Alan Cheuse, review of Steve Stern’s The Pinch, for NPR.

    [This “Sunday Sentence” was initially shared on June 14, 2015; shortly after we received the sad news of Alan’s passing on Friday, I noticed that someone had cited some words from this line on Twitter. And since I’ve been thinking of Alan all weekend, I wanted to share the post anew.]