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Book Festival Guest Moderator: Deborah Kalb
Deborah Kalb is a freelance writer and editor. She spent about two decades working as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for news organizations including Gannett News Service, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News & World Report, and The Hill, mostly covering Congress and politics. Her book blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, which she started in 2012, features hundreds of interviews she has conducted with a wide variety of authors. Deborah Kalb and Mary Grace McGeehan co-host the podcast Rereading Our Childhood, where they revisit the books they loved as children.
Opening Night, featuring Jeremy Dauber, author of Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew
Wednesday, November 1 | 7:00 PM | In Person | $18
Pre-event reception begins at 6:15 PM
ABOUT THE BOOK
Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, is one of the great comic voices of the twentieth century. Having won almost every entertainment award there is, Brooks has straddled the line between outsider and insider, obedient and rebellious, throughout his career, making out-of-bounds comedy the American mainstream.
In his book Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew, Jeremy Dauber argues that throughout Brooks’ extensive body of work—from Your Show of Shows to Blazing Saddles to Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs—the comedian has seen the most success when he found a balance between his unflagging, subversive, manic energy and the constraints imposed by comedic partners, the Hollywood system, and American cultural mores. Dauber also explores how Brooks’ American Jewish humor went from being solely for niche audiences to an essential part of the American mainstream, paving the way for generations of Jewish (and other) comedians to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Columbia University. His other books include Jewish Comedy and The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, both finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, and, most recently, American Comics: A History. He frequently lectures on topics related to American popular culture, Jewish literature, history, and humor at venues throughout the United States and internationally. He lives in New York City.
*Book will be available for purchase and the author will be signing after the event.
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Speaking Yiddish to Chickens: Holocaust Survivors on South Jersey Poultry Farms, by Seth Stern
Thursday, November 2 | 7:00 PM | In Person | $18
ABOUT THE BOOK
Speaking Yiddish to Chickens is the first book to chronicle how roughly 1,000 Holocaust survivors – including the author’s grandparents – found an unlikely refuge and gateway to new lives as poultry farmers in southern New Jersey. This book relies on interviews with dozens of these refugee farmers and their children, as well as oral histories and archival records. This is their remarkable story of loss, renewal, and perseverance in the most unexpected of settings.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Seth Stern is a legal journalist and editor at Bloomberg Industry Group. He previously reported for Bloomberg News, Congressional Quarterly, and the Christian Science Monitor. He co-authored Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and Cornell University.
*Book will be available for purchase and the author will be signing after the event.
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Kantika, by Elizabeth Graver
Friday, November 3 | 10:30 AM | $30*
*Ticket includes program and brunch. Catering provided by Shalom Kosher.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino―follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way―a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure, and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge―her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.
Exploring identity, place, and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body―in work, art, and love―serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Graver’s fifth novel, Kantika, was inspired by the migration story of her Turkish Sephardic grandmother, whose journey took her from Turkey to Spain, Cuba and New York. Turkish, German, and audio editions are forthcoming. Her novel The End of the Point was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me? won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and Prize Stories, the O. Henry Awards. She teaches at Boston College.
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Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
Sunday, November 5 | 10:30 AM | $18
ABOUT THE BOOK
Why We Love Baseball is a love letter to baseball, a fresh and heartfelt look at the game’s greatest moments and how they continue to grab at our hearts. Whether it’s Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, Shohei Ohtani’s exploits as both a pitcher and a hitter, or Josh Gibson or Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, these timeless and magical moments take us to the heart of why we love baseball after almost 150 years.
Baseball has always drawn Jewish attention, whether it was players like Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, broadcasters like Mel Allen, Gary Cohen, and Al Michaels, writers like Roger Kahn, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig, executives like Theo Epstein and Bud Selig. The Jewish love of baseball is powerful and enduring.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Posnanski is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Baseball 100, Paterno, and The Secret of Golf. Joe has been named National Sportswriter of the Year by five different organizations. He writes at JoePosnanski.com and currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family.
*Book will be available for purchase and the author will be signing after the event.
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A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness: Stories, by Jai Chakrabarti – POSTPONED
This event has been postponed. Stay tuned for an update!
Sunday, November 5 | 7:00 PM | In Person | $18
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the fifteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race. Throughout, the characters’ most vulnerable desires shape life-altering decisions as they seek to balance their needs against those of the people they hold closest. The stories in A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness capture men and women struggling with transformation and familial bonds; they traverse the intersections of countries and cultures to illuminate what it means to love in uncertain times; and they showcase the skill of a storyteller who dazzles with the breadth of his vision.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf ’21), which won a National Jewish Book Award, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Rabindranath Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness was a Good Housekeeping Book of the Month and was recommended by the New Yorker and the NYTimes. His short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Conjunctions, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize and performed on Selected Shorts by Symphony Space. His nonfiction has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Writer’s Digest, Berfrois, and LitHub. He was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and is a trained computer scientist. Born in Kolkata, India, he now lives in New York with his family.
*Book will be available for purchase and the author will be signing after the event.
Judgment and Mercy, by Martin J. Siegel
Monday, November 6 | 7:00 PM | In Person | $18
ABOUT THE BOOK
70 years ago, Judge Irving Kaufman presided over the atomic espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and sentenced them to death. Meant to propel him to “the Jewish seat” on the Supreme Court, the case haunted him to the end. In Judgment and Mercy brings to life the complexities of this man and reveals the intramural Jewish battles over assimilation, class, and patriotism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martin J. Siegel clerked for Judge Kaufman on the Second Circuit after graduating from Harvard Law School. He then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York and a staffer on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He now practices law in Houston and teaches American Legal History at the University of Houston Law Center, where he also directs the Appellate Civil Rights Clinic.
Siegel’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, and various legal journals and law reviews.
*Book will be available for purchase and the author will be signing after the event.
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