Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenThere is so much excellent content to share with you this week. Let’s get right to it.
First, one of the books I’m anticipating with considerable interest this fall is Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid. Boianjiu, an Israeli, wrote the book in English. This week, The New Yorker published an excerpt as well as a Web-only Q&A with the author.
Next: You’ve seen me mention JewishFiction.net here before. This week, The Whole Megillah ran a Q&A with JewishFiction.net’s editor, Dr. Nora Gold. I was especially impressed by Gold’s pride in her journal’s “high level of inclusiveness and diversity….For years I have been deeply concerned about the divisions, divisiveness, and polarizations within the Jewish world: between the different streams of Judaism, between religious/secular, left/right, Ashkenazi/Mizrahi, and Israel/Diaspora, to name just a few. So in Jewish Fiction.net we have made a point of publishing fiction by authors who are secular and religious (“religious” encompassing all streams of Judaism), right- and left-wing, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, old and young, female and male, economically privileged and disadvantaged, community-affiliated and community-alienated, LGBTI and straight, and from Israel and the Diaspora. It is our hope that, in this way, Jewish Fiction.net can help bring Jews together in spite of the differences between us. We all have a common language as Jews, and Jewish literature belongs to all of us. So Jewish Fiction.net is a place where all Jewish voices can be heard.”
Superb Tablet essay by a young woman currently on a Birthright trip in Israel, regarding her experiences with anti-Semitism (yes, here in the United States! in the 21st century!).
In case you missed it, Linda K. Wertheimer has curated an especially strong Jewish Book Carnival this month.
Attention, graduate students! Administered by the Philip Roth Society, “[t]he Siegel/McDaniel Award recognizes high-quality work from graduate students written on any aspect of Philip Roth’s writing in the past year (ending June 1). We recommend that faculty urge strong students to submit papers and we welcome submissions from members and non-members alike.” There’s no entry fee indicated, and the deadline is September 1, 2012. “The winner of the Siegel/McDaniel Award receives: 1) a $250 cash award; 2) a complimentary one-year membership (or renewal) in the Philip Roth Society, including a year’s subscription to Philip Roth Studies; and 3) an opportunity to work with the editor of Philip Roth Studies to publish an expanded version of the essay in the journal.”
It’s always a good week when the quarterly Jewish Book World arrives in the mail. I’ll signal to you the essays from Sami Rohr Prize winner Gal Beckerman, Rohr Choice Award winner Abigail Green, and Rohr finalist Ruth Franklin. (You can download a digital copy here.)
Next up: How about an anthology featuring work by women writers from the Middle East? Great idea! Just leave out the Israelis, please. Or else. (Can you imagine the response if it had been an Israeli author who campaigned for the exclusion of Palestinians?)
Job alert: “The Yiddish Book Center seeks a Program Manager to join a dynamic cultural organization and to join its education team. The program manager will oversee an exciting new national education program designed and led by the Book Center. The program targets Jews in their 20s and will offer week-long sessions exploring diverse aspects of modern Jewish culture and creativity.”
“As the publishing world waits with baited breath for the opening of Book Expo America this weekend, the Museum of Jewish Heritage is doing its part by bringing together authors from the Museum family to talk books with visitors. Six survivors and one survivor/US Army vet who have written books – or whose story is told in a book – will sit at tables in the lobby and talk about their books and their experiences during the war.” If you’ll be in NYC this Sunday, consider stopping by for this free event.
The new issue of Moment magazine features Jewish fiction throughout. See especially the symposium, “Is There Such a Thing as Jewish Fiction?” (with a preface from the magazine’s new Fiction Editor, Alan Cheuse); the winning entries in the Publish-a-Kid Contest; and, in this (atypical) free digital copy of the entire issue, Racelle Rosett’s short story, “Shidach.”
My latest micro-essay, which takes place within the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) in Paris, appears in the current issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
If you’re in Israel, you’ll want to take note of the extraordinary program and presenters for “Tsuris and Other Literary Pleasures,” a free creative-writing conference that begins on Sunday.
I’m sorry that it took me nearly all month to discover that the “Jewesses with Attitude” blog has been presenting a series of posts about and by American Jewish women poets to celebrate National Poetry Month.
For those of us who can’t be in Israel for the third International Writers Festival this week, here are a few next-best resources: