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TBR: Forthcoming Books by Jewish Book NETWORK Authors

by Erika Dreifus on
6

One of the best parts of participating in the Jewish Book NETWORK‘s Meet the Author Program as one of the 2011-12 authors is the opportunity I had on Sunday evening to meet some fellow NETWORK authors whom I’ve admired for a long time. For example, I was able to tell Melissa Fay Greene how much I learned from The Temple Bombing; I finally met Joan Leegant; and, thanks to the privileges of alphabetical order, I sat right next to David Bezmozgis (whose novel, The Free World, I’m just starting to read on my Kindle).

Many of the authors I had the good fortune to meet on Sunday–and others who may have shown up for one of the other sessions (this program is so large that not all of the authors can be accommodated in one evening)–are promoting books that have not yet been published.

Here are just ten forthcoming titles that were discussed on Sunday and/or are featured in this year’s Jewish Book NETWORK guide that I’m especially eager to read. (And if you’re a book reviewer looking for summer/fall titles to review, maybe you’ll find some here to interest you as well.)

  • Ellen Feldman, Next to Love (Spiegel & Grau, July)
  • Martin Fletcher, The List (St. Martin’s, October)
  • Pam Jenoff, The Things We Cherished (Doubleday, July)
  • Jodi Kantor, The Obamas (Little, Brown, November)
  • Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, November)
  • Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife (Berkley/Penguin, September)
  • Rebecca Rosenblum, The Big Dream (Biblioasis, September)
  • Philip Schultz, My Dyslexia (Norton, September)
  • Anna Solomon, The Little Bride (Riverhead, September)
  • Evelyn Toynton, The Oriental Wife (Other Press, July)

    • Two more things: Evan Fallenberg’s novel, When We Danced on Water, was released just last week. So, technically, it’s no longer “forthcoming.” But I wanted to give it (and Evan, an author I’d heard about but hadn’t met before Sunday) a shout-out here, anyway. I also have to mention Randy Susan Meyers’s The Murderer’s Daughters. Randy was there on Sunday to promote the paperback, and I told her very honestly that a copy is atop the stack on my nightstand right now.

    Reactions? Thoughts?

    Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • “The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program has announced the names of 10 leading Israeli artists it will place in residencies at colleges and universities across the U.S. this fall and next spring.” (via eJewish Philanthropy)
  • Mazel Tov to Philip Roth, who has won the Man Booker International Prize 2011. (Roth also appeared at YIVO/the Center for Jewish History this week. Tablet has a good recap.)
  • I didn’t even try to make it to the Roth event, because I had other plans: I had the chance to speak via phone with a synagogue book group about my story collection, Quiet Americans. It was a wonderful chat! (And if your group would like me to “visit” telephonically, please read this.)
  • As Short Story Month continues, I’ve written about Margot Singer’s story, “Body Count,” and why it is a story I love.
  • Find out how to use social media to promote your Jewish children’s book: Part I is already online and I expect that Part II will be added shortly.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • Get to know Marcie Greenfield Simons, Director of The PJ Library, in this Whole Megillah interview.
  • The Jewish Book Council has announced its Twitter Book Club title for June: David Bezmozgis’s novel, The Free World.
  • Lilith’s Spring Auction ends on May 22. Peruse the offerings (and perhaps bid on a copy of my short-story collection, Quiet Americans).
  • From the Jewish Publication Society: “On June 7, 2011, JPS will be tweeting the entire Book of Ruth using the hashtag #Torah with the hopes of tweeting #Torah to the top ten on Twitter.”
  • Author Maggie Anton will be making several appearances in New Jersey next week. She’ll be discussing her series of novels about the daughters of Rashi, the famous medieval French rabbi and Torah and Talmud commentator. Details in the New Jersey Jewish News.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    TBR: How to Spot One of Us, Poems by Janet R. Kirchheimer

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    One of the highlights of this past week was my attendance at a conference on “German-Speaking Jews in New York City: Their Immigration and Lasting Presence.” Co-sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute and the Baruch College Jewish Studies Center, the conference featured several panels. I was on one of those panels, and that’s where I met Janet R. Kirchheimer, fellow panelist, poet, and author.

    In our session, Janet read several poems from her 2007 collection, How to Spot One of Us. The first poem she shared, “This Is How My Opa Strauss Died,” nearly brought me to tears. (The poem is available online, so you can read it for yourself. I dare you not to be moved. Then, you can read some additional poems of Kirchheimer’s on the same site.)

    Janet is a daughter of Holocaust survivors, and her identity and familial experience are at the heart of this book. With this collection, as Rabbi Irwin Kula notes in his foreword, she “has taken a particular Jewish event—the Holocaust—a particular family’s experiences, and the personal and intimate details of particular people in particular places at particular moments and has aspired to a universal revelation of a new sense of reality. There is no easy catharsis here and yet as we read the poems and experience the intimacy of tragedy, loss, anguish, and despair we are invited with fierce grace to preserve our humanity and faith.” Or, as Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg adds in an introduction, these poems “…so shall the words written in this book not return empty-handed but will infuse the mind of every reader, giving life to the dead and compassion to the living.”

    I’d hoped to manage to return to the conference for an evening conference session, where I’d have been able to buy a copy of How to Spot One of Us and ask Janet to sign it for me. Alas, life intervened, and I had to make do with an online order. Luckily, the book has already arrived (thank you, Amazon Prime!). And somehow, it seems to be autographed.

    I really can’t wait to read this book. It’s the absolute next title on my TBR list. Perhaps it should be on yours?

    Notes from Around the Web: Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • Get to know the next generation of Jewish children’s book reviewers by reading the winning entries in this year’s Moment magazine Publish-A-Kid contest.
  • UJA-Federation is looking for a part-time writer (New York).
  • This week, my short story, “The Quiet American, Or How to Be a Good Guest,” was featured on the Emerging Writers Network. This is the effective “title story” for my collection, Quiet Americans.
  • The aforementioned Emerging Writers Network is, like many other sites, celebrating Short Story Month. Which short-story collections on Jewish themes would you recommend to others? (Apart from Quiet Americans, of course!)
  • Welcome to the Web, Jewish News Archive!

    • Shabbat shalom!