Erika Dreifus

Last Friday, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), announced its “tentative list of accepted panels for the AWP 2011 Conference & Bookfair in Washington, D.C.at” The final list will be available in October (the conference is slated for early February 2011).

I was thrilled to learn that the following panel is among the accepted events:

Beyond Bagels and Lox: Jewish-American Fiction in the 21st Century
Erika Dreifus, Andrew Furman, Kevin Haworth, Margot Singer, Anna Solomon
Jewish-American fiction has long been seen as a literature of emigration from the shtetl, assimilationist angst, and overprotective parents. But what’s nu? How do Americans born decades after the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel deal with those complex subjects in fiction? Who are the new Jewish immigrant characters? How does American Jewry’s more than 350-year history inspire plot/setting? And how are writers today influenced by Judaism’s rich multilingual and spiritual legacy?

At least two other events on the list seem linked to issues of Jewish writing: “Two Jews, a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Mennonite Sufi Shaman, and a ________ walk into an AWP Panel: Geography’s Influence on Writers Writing Religion and Culture,” featuring Eric Wasserman, Ira Sukrungruang, Heather Derr-Smith, Bich Minh Nguyen, Erika Meitner, and Mary Biddinger; and “Jewish Guilt,” with Janice Eidus, Carol V. Davis, Marjorie Agosin, Ruth Knafo Setton, and Elaine Terranova.

It’s wonderful to see Jewish writing acknowledged and celebrated in the conference program. Now, to prepare some excellent presentations! Stay tuned–I’ll be asking for reader input!

Bay Area fans of author/activist Grace Paley have at least two opportunities to see Lily Rivlin’s documentary, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts.

From the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival description:

Lily Rivlin’s (Gimme a Kiss, SFJFF 2002) intimate documentary is a rich, inspiring portrait of Jewish writer and activist Grace Paley, who passed away in 2007. Paley’s acclaimed first short story collection, The Little Disturbances of Man, established her reputation with its brilliantly sad and funny chronicles of Jewish American urban females much like herself. Paley’s New York tales, filled with an emotional and sexual frankness especially bold at the tail end of the frightened 1950s, soon became classics of the short fiction form. Not content to rest on her laurels, however, Paley combined her evolving literary career with passionate pursuit of her political concerns through the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “Art is too long and life is too short,”wrote the outspoken Paley, “There’s a lot more to do in life than writing.” Indeed, she spent the rest of her life on the front lines of the anti-war and women’s movements, where she endured being arrested time and again. Rivlin’s film confidently juggles all aspects of Paley’s extraordinary story, told in candid recollections and passionate readings by Paley herself, along with fond remembrances by literary critics, family and writer-friends Allan Gurganus and Alice Walker. Throughout, Grace Paley: Collected Shorts casts an important and penetrating light on a brilliant and highly principled woman who constantly reinvented both her life and art.

You can catch the film on July 25th at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco, or on August 1st at The Roda Theatre in Berkeley.