Join the Forward’s next book club — featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks

Image by Anya Ulinich

By Talya Zax May 1, 2020

We organized The Forward Book Club on a whim, hoping to give our readers, and ourselves, a sense of community in a time of distance.

Our first book was “Bread Givers” by Anzia Yezierska. Over our month of conversations about that novel, our meetings became something we looked forward to every week, an opportunity to make new connections despite our isolation.

It was so fun that we’ve decided to do it again: Welcome to The Forward Book Club, round two.

This time, we’re reading “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks. And, to our great excitement, Brooks — a journalist and novelist who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book “March” — will be joining us to discuss the novel for our last meeting.

“People of the Book” is an ode to one of the great cultural gifts of the Jewish people: Our formative passion for the written word. It follows a rare books expert tasked with conducting a close examination of the Sarajevo Haggadah, who, in the process of her efforts, learns more about the book and the people who shaped its history than she ever could have expected. It’s been recommended to us over and over, and we’re so looking forward to sharing it with you.

Our first meeting will be Wednesday, May 6, at 3 pm EST. After that, we’ll meet every Wednesday for the rest of May at the same time: That’s May 13, 20 and 27. Your book club leaders are Rachel Fishman Feddersen, the Forward’s publisher and CEO, Chana Pollack, our archivist, and myself, the deputy culture editor. All meetings occur over Zoom, and last for about an hour.

If you’d like to join the book club, please email [email protected]; we’ll send out regular updates and the links for our Zoom meetings from that account. You can also join our Facebook group to continue the conversation between meetings.

Can’t wait to get reading with you!

Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.

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