Photo Credit: Reut Miryam CohenEvery Friday, My Machberet presents a set of Jewish Literary Links to close out the week.
First up: I’m currently reading Francesca Segal’s The Innocents, a novel that updates Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and transplants it to Jewish London. You still have time to read a copy yourself before the Jewish Book Council’s Twitter chat with the author, which is slated for July 16.
Also looking just a bit ahead: If you’re in New York, you may want to catch “Four Jewish Guys: Poetry and Performance,” scheduled for July 19 and featuring Jake Marmer, Jay Michaelson, Yehoshua November, and Philip Terman.
Not easy to read, but noteworthy nonetheless: “The American Girl in the Bunker,” a first-person account of a volunteer from New York serving in an IDF paratrooper unit–and dealing with rockets from Gaza.
The latest Rockower Awards–for excellence in Jewish journalism–have been announced. Mazel tov to all of the honorees. Special kudos to some bylines/pubs/websites you’ve seen me reference here on My Machberet: Judy Bolton-Fasman, Andrew Silow-Caroll/New Jersey Jewish Week, The Jewish Week, Jewish Women’s Archive, & JTA.
Much sooner, the house in Brazil where refugee author Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide together in 1942–the Casa Stefan Zweig–will open as a museum. Benjamin Ivry revisits this author’s history for The Forward.
Themed “Translation/Transformation,” the new Ilanot Review features work by Etgar Keret and Margot Singer and an interview with Evan Fallenberg, among other wonderful items. (I’m thrilled that “Lebensraum,” a story from Quiet Americans, is also part of this issue.)
In this podcast from the Yiddish Book Center, “Ilan Stavans sits down with Josh Lambert to answer questions about the concept behind his documentary-style fotonovela, Once@9:53am, a fictional meditation of the two hours before the 1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.” The Once@9:53am exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center runs into early November.
Coming soon: The Toronto Jewish Book Festival (June 4-7, 2012), featuring, on June 6, a celebration of JewishFiction.net’s second anniversary.
If you missed the latest meeting of the Jewish Book Council’s Twitter Book Club (as I did), you can read the transcript of the chat with Ramona Ausubel, author of No One Is Here Except All of Us.
Zackary Sholem Berger’s Tablet article introduced me to a slice of Jewish writing that is utterly new to me: a sort of underground Hasidic literary culture.
Still waiting to read my story collection, Quiet Americans? Here’s another opportunity to win a free copy. Simply leave a comment on Christi Craig’s generous Q&A with me about the book.
Once again, there’s so much to share this week. Let’s get started.
You may recall how much I admired HHhH, the Laurent Binet novel translated by Sam Taylor. Now, I’m thinking that I should try to pick up a copy of the original French edition. Plus: In The New Yorker, James Wood weighs in with a review that’s definitely worth reading (and thinking about).
Mazel tov to Israel on the recent honor it received at the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires.
“The Philip Roth Society proudly announces a call for papers for Roth@80, a conference event organized, in conjunction with the Newark Preservation & Landmarks Committee, to mark the 80th birthday of Philip Roth. It will take place on March 18-19, 2013, at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, NJ.” Proposal deadline is September 1, 2012.
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.
