JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
If you’re anything like me, you spent a good part of the early aughts nose deep in a truly depressing series of books. I’m referring of course, to “A Series of Unfortunate Events” which tells the woeful tale of a trio of orphan siblings trying to escape the clutches of the devious Count Olaf. Well…
Despite her comparative youth, debut author Molly Antopol, 36, is something of a throwback. In her 2014 short-story collection, “The UnAmericans,” the San Francisco-based writer chronicled the gamut of the 20th-century American immigrant experience. Her keen eye and knack for mimicry enabled her to expose the lives of a wide array of characters — East…
The National Book Award long list of nominees for 2014 were announced Wednesday, and three books by Jewish writers were nominated. In the nonfiction category, the graphic memoir “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” by Roz Chast, a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and “The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks…
Intentions By Deborah Heiligman Knopf Books for Young Readers, 272 pages, $16.99 ‘I wish I were Amish,” says 16-year-old Rachel Greenberg. “Or a Hasidic Jew … All the rules are set for you, all the decisions made. Wouldn’t that be nice?” The narrator of Deborah Heiligman’s new young adult novel, “Intentions,” is neither Amish nor…
“Take the time to be brief.” That’s the advice Edith Pearlman, one of five finalists for the National Book Award in fiction, wants to give to young writers. Pearlman’s book, “Binocular Vision,” did not win, perhaps because a collection of short stories has not won since Andrea Barrett’s collection, “Ship Fever,” was victorious in 1996….
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Rodger Kamenetz introduces “The Change” by Alicia Ostriker. This piece originally appeared on August 3, 2001, as part of the Forward’s Psalm 151 series. It is being published here online for the first time. Ms. Ostriker has published…
The National Book Award finalists were announced yesterday. And for the first time ever, 13 of the 20 finalists were female. They included Lionel Shriver, (acclaimed Jewish novelist) Nicole Krauss, and most wonderfully, alternative punk rocker Patti Smith for her recently published memoir. Jonathan Franzen, subject of so much acclaim and backlash in recent weeks,…
Two Stanford PhDs — Kenneth Moss and Sarah Abrevaya Stein — have shared the latest Sami Rohr Prize. In a move the committee has characterized as “unprecedented” (i.e. they didn’t do it the one other time they awarded the non-fiction prize) the top prize has been shared and the second prize scrapped. What goes unmentioned…
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