“The Hours Count,” Jillian Cantor’s second historical novel, includes a personal connection to her subject. The book, mainly a fictional portrait of Ethel Rosenberg, is also a tribute of sorts. Cantor was born on June 19, 1978, the 25th anniversary of the Rosenbergs’ executions. She came upon this bit of karmic information while she was…
On the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Sigal Samuel presents a short story about what happens when the famous scientist can no longer be trusted. I had been dating Ben for two weeks, three days, eight hours, twenty-nine minutes and fifteen seconds when my best friend, Jay, got dumped. I biked to…
Ben Lerner, 36, began his writing career as a poet, but his two debut novels, one published in 2011 and the other last year, quickly gained critical acclaim and have both been called “brilliant” and “revolutionary,” among other praise. This year Lerner received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship of $625,000 for his work. Though he has…
Does this really surprise anyone? The week his first hardcover paper book comes out, “The Fat Jew” is declaring social media, where he has 6.5 million Instagram followers, to be . “I was very much born out of the Internet,” the funnyman (real name the Josh Ostrovsky) tells The Telegraph. “But my feeling is that…
Sigal Samuel and I grew up in the same city, attended the same college and ended up in the same office. Before that momentous event, our paths had never crossed. (Full disclosure: since then, we have become attached at the hip — or the byline.) I grew up in a secular, if proudly Sephardic, environment….
The Mystics of Mile End, Forward editor Sigal Samuel’s debut novel about a dysfunctional Jewish family, will be published by HarperCollins on October 13. Told from multiple perspectives, the story takes place in an iconic Montreal neighborhood that is home to hipsters and Hasidic Jews. In this excerpt, we see the family and their neighbors…
The late, great Italian novelist and memoirist Natalia Ginzburg once observed that everything that one writes is a little autobiographical. Glimmers of Jessamyn Hope’s personal story are scattered throughout her lovely, memorable and newly published novel, “Safekeeping.” Hope’s impressive roman a clef takes place in 1994 and its events are set into motion early on…
At first glance Alfred and Sylvia Lawrie were hardly the sort of people one would have called intimidating. Alfred was in his late 70s, tall and vague, one of those elderly men who stay long and skinny in the arms and legs, but put on weight in the middle. His beard was white and haphazard,…
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