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Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

(Today marks the beginning of National Poetry Month, and this link list appropriately begins with poetry for the occasion.)

  • On Monday, The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Arts & Academe blog featured Erika Meitner’s poem, “Yizker Bukh.”
  • Adam Kirsch reviews and recommends Whitethorn, a new poetry collection by Jacqueline Osherow.
  • Yoram Kaniuk has won the Sapir Prize for Literature.
  • “Writer, historian and playwright Jane Mushabac will perform and discuss her Sephardic short story “Pasha: Ruminations of David Aroughetti” on Monday, April 11, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., in New York City College of Technology’s (City Tech) Atrium Amphitheater, 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The public is invited to this free event.”
  • Remember that my story collection, Quiet Americans is the Jewish Book Council’s April selection for its Twitter Book Club. Come tweet with us on April 12.
  • And if you’re a Kindle fan, here’s some extra good news: Quiet Americans is now available for the Kindle! And I’m giving away two “copies”!
  • Quiet Americans has also been chosen by a Pennsylvania synagogue for its May book group. I’ll be chatting with the group via phone when they gather. If you’re interested in inviting me to join your discussion of Quiet Americans–or even if you’d just like to peruse a few discussion questions–please click here for more information.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • Mazel Tov to Austin Ratner, who has won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in fiction for his debut novel, The Jump Artist (Bellevue Literary Press), and to Joseph Skibell, who is the runner-up and recipient of of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award. His award-winning novel is A Curable Romantic (Algonquin). Two more books on my to-read list.
  • Make that three. After reading Sandee Brawarsky’s review, I’m putting Sharon Pomerantz’s Rich Boy atop the list.
  • “With new Jewish-themed television programs, critically acclaimed Jewish fiction, experimental electro-klezmer bands and Jewish-Muslim theater groups, British Jews are producing obviously Jewish-inflected artworks in increasingly vibrant and creative ways, which often become part of the mainstream culture,” writes Rebecca Schischa, for The Jewish Week.
  • Adam Kirsch reviews the newly-available translation (by Tim Wilkinson) of Imre Kertesz’s Fiasco.
  • For his part, Jonathan Kirsch reviews and recommends a new novel by Alan Cheuse, Song of Slaves in the Desert, which features a character “who stands in for the 3 to 5 percent of American slaveholders in the antebellum South who were Jewish.”
  • Job alert: “New Voices and JSPS [the Jewish Student Press Service] are seeking a full-time Editor in Chief/Executive Director. New Voices is the only national, independent magazine written for and by Jewish college students. Published by the Jewish Student Press Service (est. 1971), New Voices and newvoices.org cover Jewish issues from a student perspective. JSPS also runs the annual National Jewish Student Journalism conference, now in its 40th year.”
  • Another job alert, this time from the Jewish Federation of Broward County, Fla., which is seeking a part-time PJ Library Community Coordinator.

    • Ian McEwan’s Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Yesterday, British author Ian McEwan accepted the Jerusalem Prize. Here’s the text of his acceptance speech.

    I admire McEwan’s work and I’m glad (and grateful) that he refused calls to boycott the prize. Still…although no one could call the criticisms in his speech one-sided (although some will, of course, try), I wish they’d been at least a bit less tilted against Israel.

    Meantime, the Jerusalem International Book Fair continues. (I’m not there, but Quiet Americans is!) I’m not seeing a whole lot of JIBF coverage online. Are you?

    Notes from Around the Web: Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    A few literary links to direct your way before Shabbat:

  • Really fascinating take on “[Jonathan] Franzen, [Allegra] Goodman, and ‘The Great American Novel’,” by Gabriel Brownstein over on The Millions.
  • Many Mazel Tovs to the finalists for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. This year, the award will be presented to a fiction writer, and the contenders are Allison Amend (Stations West), Nadia Kalman (The Cosmopolitans), Julie Orringer (The Invisible Bridge), Austin Ratner (The Jump Artist), and Joseph Skibell (A Curable Romantic).
  • The situation in Egypt has inspired author André Aciman to revisit his memories of growing up (Jewish) in Alexandria.
  • Book critic Sandee Brawarsky recommends the poetry of Merle Feld.
  • Jewcy.com presents its canonical “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years.” (hat tip, Jewish Book Council)
  • Less canonical, perhaps, but no less worth reading (at least in my view): the bibliography that accompanied a recent panel on Jewish-American Fiction in the 21st Century.
  • Last Sunday, I spent a lovely afternoon touring (and reading from my new book of short stories, Quiet Americans) at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History.
  • Speaking of my book, please check in with our blog tour. Our latest stops have taken us to the Jewish Muse and First Line blogs.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Notes from Around the Web: Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • The National Jewish Book Award winners were announced this week. As were the 2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award honorees.
  • This past Wednesday, the Jewish Book Council hosted its latest Twitter Book Club chat online. Up for discussion: Elizabeth Rosner’s Blue Nude. It was a busy day at the office for me, but I was able to drop in during the lunchtime chat. Want to know what was discussed? Read the transcript.
  • Recognizing authors’ names in Josh Lambert’s Tablet books column is getting to be a habit! This week, I was happy to see mentioned Ida Hattemer-Higgins, whose debut novel, The History of History, “features an American Jewish woman in Berlin with a hole in her memory and a growing fascination with the wife of Joseph Goebbels, living in a city in which the legacy of Nazism insinuates itself in magically concrete ways.” I’ve known about this book for several years through the author’s posts on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy online discussion forum, where I have been known to chime in, too.
  • Speaking of familiar names, imagine how excited I was to see a certain short-story collection headlining the weekly Jewish Book Council newsletter as “recommended reading”!
  • Jewish Ideas Daily let us in on Ladino.
  • We lost musical genius and spiritual leader Debbie Friedman this week. Among the many tributes, with reflections on Debbie’s contributions to the experience of Jewish prayer, is this lovely one, from Linda K. Wertheimer.
  • Coming soon: the Jerusalem Season of Culture.

    • Shabbat shalom.