Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.
First: This week brought the release of an English translation of a newly discovered poem, “Hora to an Exiled Girl,” by Hannah Senesh.
Next up: Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Telegraph Avenue, will be released next week. Reviewer Diane Cole describes it as a “lively portrait of a community where blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, politicians of every party, all manage to overcome their own latent (and sometimes blatant) prejudices to settle conflicts, both personal and public, and live peacefully together.”
And if you’re looking for some more fall books on Jewish themes, this preview should help you find a few.
A college student whose grandmother survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest reflects on “generational memory” of the Holocaust and her writing. (I can’t help thinking that, as is being reported, not everyone in the third generation may be “traumatized” by their grandparents’ histories. But there sure are increasing numbers of us writing about it these days.)
And if you missed it on my other blog, a couple of days ago I shared some thoughts about (and examples of) “Bat Mitzvah poetry”–plus a family photo.
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.
First up this week: The Jewish Book Council has announced the schedule and opened registration for the next Jewish Children’s Book & Illustrators Conference, taking place in NYC on November 18.
Next: I’m not sure how I missed my friend Andrew Furman’s review of Shalom Auslander’s Hope: A Tragedy, but, as the saying goes, better late than never. (The review’s basic message is summarized by the subtitle: “Bad things happen when Jews move to the country, in fiction, anyway.”)
Shoshanna Olidort offers a thoughtful take for the Los Angeles Review of Books on Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.
My own latest published review looks at Jeffrey Lewis’s Berlin Cantata.
And in case you missed it, over on my other blog, I’ve shared excerpts from a (rejected) panel proposal titled “From Generation to Generation: 2G and 3G Approaches to Writing About the Holocaust.”
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.
This week brought the excellent news of a forthcoming essay collection by Kevin Haworth. Titled Famous Drownings in Literary History, the collection is billed as grappling with the “confusing things that make up the life of post-9/11 Jewish American parents and artists.” You can read one of the book’s essays, “The News from Bulgaria,” on Airplane Reading.
“The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute awards grants to support interdisciplinary research or artistic projects on Jewish women and gender issues. Scholars, activists, writers and artists who are pursuing research on questions of significance to the field of Jewish women’s studies may apply.” Application deadline: September 13, 2012.
Terrific essay by Doreen Carvajal about her family: “We were raised as Catholics in Costa Rica and California, but late in life I finally started collecting the nagging clues of a very clandestine identity: that we were descendants of secret Sephardic Jews — Christian converts known as conversos, or Anusim (Hebrew for the forced ones) or even Marranos, which in Spanish means swine.”
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.
First up: this month’s Jewish Book Carnival, hosted by Needle in the Bookstacks, a blog from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) librarians.
A brand-new issue of JewishFiction.net is now available for our reading pleasure.
I read it first in the print magazine, but it looks as though Moment has made Edith Pearlman’s short story, “The Kargman Affliction,” available online, too.
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.
First up is an event taking place this Sunday–in Yiddish–at NYC’s Center for Jewish History: “The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research together with the Congress for Jewish Culture, CYCO Books, the Forward Association, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen’s Circle invite you to attend a commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Soviet Yiddish writers and other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee at the hands of Stalin. There will be several short films based on the poetry of Perets Markish; Boris Sandler, editor of the Forward, will read his own poems; well-known singers Hy Wolfe and Paula Teitelbaum will sing and recite poetry; Shane Baker will recite poetry; David Mandelbaum of New Yiddish Rep and Paul Glasser of YIVO will read prose. The emcee will be Tom Bird of Queens College.”
Lots to think about in Ilana Sichel’s review of Anouk Markovits’s I Am Forbidden.
In somewhat related news: Zackary Sholem Berger profiles “the writers and editors behind the astonishing rise of Orthodox magazines and fiction.”
The passing of businessman and philanthropist Sami Rohr this week has been noted in many quarters. Among the most lovely tributes is Gal Beckerman’s.
Finally, yet another contest from The Whole Megillah: “Yom Kippur often gets us thinking about our departed loved ones and our own lives. Perhaps you’ve even written your reflections about your family or yourself. If you have a memoir manuscript in progress, consider submitting its first page to The Whole Megillah First Page Competition for Memoir.”
