Writer/musician Michael Hearst loves a good artistic challenge, like whipping up recipes set to song or penning odes to the world’s weirdest animals. A founding member of the klezmer-ish band One Ring Zero, Hearst grew up Jewish in Virginia Beach and moved to New York, where he has put his musical training and deep love…
Forward contributor Jo-Ann Mort speaks to Orange Prize-winning novelist Linda Grant about her new novel, “We Had It So Good.” In it, Grant uses the story of an American Jew in Britain to illuminate how baby boomers’ hippie beginnings actually led them to more traditional professions and lives of conspicuous consumption. Read Jo-Ann Mort’s review…
Haley Tanner’s debut novel, “Vaclav & Lena” (Dial Press), is about love without questions, hesitation or limits. This love flourishes between two Russian-Jewish immigrant children in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn: Vaclav dreams of becoming a magician, like Houdini, and casting the fragile Lena as his assistant. Tragedy temporarily unhinges this plan, and when…
Meg Wolitzer writes in spaces where women’s emotions run high: She has tackled wives overshadowed by their husbands, as well as career woman who became stay-at-home moms. In her new novel, “The Uncoupling” (Riverhead), she investigates sex by creating characters who stop having it altogether when a spell enchants their suburb. The magic begins —…
Matthew Sharpe is the author of a story collection and four novels. His most recent is “You Were Wrong,” published last summer by Bloomsbury USA. He spoke to Allison Yarrow about writing of a suburban house, his Jewish sensibility and Kafka’s inexplicit religious authority. Listen to the podcast below and subscribe to Forward podcasts on…
From the Borscht Belt to poop jokes, Jewish comedy comes in many forms, and Michael Showalter has a little of both in his repertoire. The comedian, who wrote and starred in the films “The Baxter” and “Wet Hot American Summer,” has lent his many gifts to his new “humoir,” “Mr. Funny Pants” (Grand Central Publishing),…
Sharon Salzberg co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., and has taught spirituality and meditation for 35 years. By the time she was 16, she had lived in five different family configurations, and each had ended in trauma. Feeling alone led her to India when she was 18. There she discovered the Buddhist teachings…
Thirty-two-year-old writer and humorist Sloane Crosley has published two books of essays on topics ranging from what not to do in the office (bake cookies shaped like the boss) to how to attend an Alaskan wedding (armed with the definition of “scat”; it means “bear feces”). In this Yid Lit Podcast, she talks about her…
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