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Israeli Writer Series
小蓝视频鈥檚 Israeli Writer Series brings influential Israeli writers in person and virtually to the 小蓝视频 campus. Through public lectures and literature master classes we will experience Israeli identity through the eyes and ears of some of its most important cultural voices. The Israeli Writer Series is co-sponsored by the Center for Israel Studies, Department of Literature and the Jewish Studies Program. The 2023 series was made possible through the generosity of the Knapp Family Foundation. The 2024 series is sponsored by the Ken and Mimi Heyman Israel Studies Programming Fund.
"Creativity in a Time of Crisis" with Etgar KeretAbramson Family Founders Room, SIS Building
September 16, 1:00
Please join us as Israeli writer and filmmaker reads selections from his new book, Autocorrect (May, 2024 in Hebrew), and discusses his life and work, including the challenge and imperative of creativity in the current moment in Israel and around the world.
The discussion, moderated by 小蓝视频 Professor Lauren Strauss, will be followed by a reception with book sales and signing.
Published in 46 countries and translated into 41 languages, Keret has won numerous awards for his fiction, as well as the 2016 Charles Bronfman Prize for humanitarian work. Keret's newest book of stories, Fly Already, won the prestigious Sapir Prize.听Famous for his collections of short stories and graphic novels, some of Keret's most popular works include: The Seven Good Years, Suddenly, A Knock on the Door, The Nimrod Flipout, The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories, and Fly Already.
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, "Trauma and Recovery from Fiction to Life"
February 19, 7:00 p.m.
The 小蓝视频 Meltzer Schwartzberg Center for Israel Studies continued its Israeli Writer Series in Spring 2024 with an evening in conversation with award-winning Israeli author and psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and Professor Lauren Strauss. Ayelet Gundar-Goshen explored narratives of trauma and recovery, as they manifest in Israeli society and throughout literature.
The discussion and Q&A was followed by a book sale/signing for The Wolf Hunt and dessert reception.
A clinical psychologist and award-winning author, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's first novel, One Night, Markovitch, won the Sapir Prize in 2012 for debut novels, the Italian Adei-Wizo Prize, and the French Adei-Wizo Prize. It has been translated to 14 languages. Gundar-Goshen's second novel, Waking Lions, won the 2017 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. The New York Times Book Review picked Waking Lions as "Editors' Choice", and The Wall Street Journal selected it for its "Best Summer Reads" list. Her critically acclaimed third novel, The Liar, was published in English in 2019.
In her fourth novel The Wolf Hunt, Goshen explores the burning questions of Jewish and Israeli identity. The Wolf Hunt is a head-on collision between the American dream and the Jewish longing for the promised land, as the reality of racial tensions threatens to boil over. It is also a piercing psychological portrait of the relationship between parents and their children, a story about a mother forced to take on the role of a detective, in search of a truth that might destroy her.
The Wolf Hunt is an international bestseller, published in 17 countries, and met with rave reviews around the world. Winner of WIZO prize, Italy, 2023.
Gundar-Goshen is a contributor to BBC's The Cultural Frontline, Financial Times, Time Magazine and The Telegraph.
The event was cosponsored by听小蓝视频's Jewish Studies Program and Department of Literature.
Omer Friedlander,听The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land
February 15, 2023, 1:00 pm ET
The 小蓝视频 Center for Israel Studies continued its Israeli Writers Series in 2023 with an evening in conversation with award-winning Israeli author Omer Friedlander.
A Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University,听Omer Friedlander听is the author of the short story collection,听The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land听(Random House, 2022). 听Friedlander earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge, England, and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He has also earned fellowships from Bread Loaf, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Blue Mountain Center. His novel,听The Glass Golem, is forthcoming from Random House.
Friedlander's short stories have won numerous awards, including the听Baltimore Review听Winter Contest,听Sonora ReviewContest, Tom Howard / John H. Reid Contest,听Moment Magazine鈥檚 Karma Foundation Fiction Prize. He has been a finalist for the听Chicago Tribune鈥檚 Nelson Algren Award, an others. His stories have been published in many countries, including the United States, Canada, France, and Israel.听The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land听has also been published in the United Kingdom, and is forthcoming in other languages, including Italian, Dutch, and Turkish.
Omer Friedlander is the grandson of Saul Friedlander, the Pulitzer-prize winning Holocaust historian. He currently lives in New York City.
Maya Arad,听The Hebrew Teacher
April 18, 2022, 1:00 pm ET
A conversation with Israeli Writer Maya Arad concludes 小蓝视频's Spring 2022 Israeli Writers Series. On the face of it, Arad鈥檚 novella, The Hebrew Teacher, is a laser-sharp takedown of academic politics and on-campus trends, entwined with the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But her story covers much deeper, broader issues as well 鈥 the role of languages, like Hebrew, that 鈥渓ive in translation鈥 in diaspora, and the personal aspirations and disappointments of her sensitively drawn characters.
Maya Arad is a best-selling Israeli writer living in Palo Alto, California. She is a graduate of Tel Aviv University and the University of London, with degrees in Classics and Linguistics. Arad has been a writer in residence at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University since 2014. She is the author of 10 Hebrew books spanning many genres 鈥 novels, novellas, a novel in verse, crime fiction, and non-fiction. They include Another Place, A Foreign City, Seven Moral Failings, Short Story Artist, Our Lady of Kazan, and The Hebrew Teacher.
Host/Interlocuteur: Lauren Strauss
Ayelet Tsabari,听The Art of Leaving
March 31, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET
Ayelet Tsabari鈥檚 celebrated memoir, named 鈥渙ne of the best books of the year鈥 by Kirkus Reviews, has won multiple awards since its publication in English in 2019. Tsabari traces her journey around the globe from New York to India, in search of a way out of her grief at the loss of her father when she was young, and sharing other profound reflections on life along the way. Born to a large Yemenite Jewish family in Israel, Tsabari鈥檚 unique history leads her to memorable and universal truths.
Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir and several other awards and accolades. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, was a New York Times Book Review Editors鈥 Choice and has been published internationally. It also won the prestigious Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. In addition to her writing, Tsabari has studied photography and filmmaking and has won awards for documentary film. She lives and teaches in Ontario, Canada, and also teaches Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University in Israel.
Host/Interlocuteur: Lauren Strauss
Rutu Modan,听Tunnels 听
March 21, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET
Raiders of the Lost Ark meets present-day Israeli-Palestinian relations, with a side of family drama and history! Writer/illustrator Rutu Modan鈥檚 latest book, a mesmerizing archeological adventure told through the pages of a graphic novel, is a best-seller by an award-winning artist and raconteur.
Rutu Modan graduated with distinction from Israel鈥檚 premier art school, the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and is the author/illustrator of several graphic novels and children's books and many short stories, as well as editing the Hebrew edition of MAD magazine. She comes from a distinguished family that includes well-known scientists and doctors. In addition to garnering awards for a number of her books and stories, Modan was chosen as an outstanding artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation in 2005. She lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Host/Interlocuteur: Lauren Strauss
David Grossman,听More Than I Love My Life
March 15, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET.
To kick off the series, on March 15 best-selling author David Grossman discusses his latest novel, More than I Love My Life, in conversation with Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies. Listen in as a renowned writer shares his thoughts on the art of storytelling, inventing real people and telling old stories with new words.
Born in Jerusalem in 1954, David Grossman is one of Israel鈥檚 leading writers. He has been wrestling with the trauma of war and the prospects for peace, as well as love, jealousy, and family relationships for more than three decades. In his first novel, SEE UNDER: LOVE, he grappled with the legacy of the Holocaust. In The Yellow Wind he foresaw the explosive first intifada, and in his bestselling To the End of the Land, he hauntingly portrayed a mother's love for her son in a time of conflict.
Host/Interlocuteur: Michael Brenner
Grossman is the author of nineteen books that have been translated into forty-five languages around the world. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, and several of his books have been adapted to international stage and screen productions. The opera based on Falling Out of Time is scheduled to premiere at Carnegie Hall, in May 2022.
Among many other honors and awards, Grossman was the winner of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for A Horse Walks into a Bar, and the 2018 Israel Prize, considered to be the State's highest honor. His latest novel, More Than I Love My Life, was published internationally in 2020-21 to his best reviews ever. The Frankfurter Allgemeine writes, 鈥淒avid Grossman is simply the greatest living novelist.鈥
The Dark and Surreal World of Etgar Keret
September 10, 2019
The Center for Israel Studies hosted Etgar Keret, Israeli author and filmmaker, who read from his stories and discussed the role of writers in Israeli society today. Internationally acclaimed for his short stories, Keret is hailed as the voice of young Israel. Rarely extending beyond three or four pages, Keret's stories fuse the banal with the surreal, and offer a window on a surreal world that is both dark and comic.
Published in 46 countries and translated into 41 languages, Keret has won numerous awards for his fiction, as well as the 2016 Charles Bronfman Prize for humanitarian work. Keret's new book of stories, Fly Already, won the prestigious Sapir Prize.
Keret's books Fly Already, Suddenly a Knock on the Door and his memoir, The Seven Good Years, were available for sale and signing at the event.
This event was hosted by the Center for Israel Studies and co-sponsored by 小蓝视频's Jewish Studies Program, Department of Literature, the Washington College of Law Jewish Student Law Association, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Temple Micah.