Join The Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance for a con­ver­sa­tion between authors Eliz­a­beth McCrack­en, the 2024 Wingate Prize win­ner for her book The Hero of this Book, and Sab­ri­na Orah Mark, Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s 73rd Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award win­ner for the Auto­bi­og­ra­phy and Mem­oir cat­e­go­ry for her book Hap­pi­ly: A Per­son­al His­to­ry-with Fairy Tales. The two authors will dis­cuss their books, which revolve around com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships with fam­i­ly, the strug­gles and joys of moth­er­hood, and the rela­tion­ship the author has with them­selves as a per­son and a writer. The con­ver­sa­tion will be mod­er­at­ed by Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s fic­tion edi­tor, Josh Rol­nick. The vir­tu­al event will take place on Thurs­day, June 20th at 1:00 PM ET.

To pur­chase one or either of these author’s books, please click here!

Speak­ers:

Eliz­a­beth McCrack­en is the author of eight books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hur­ry, The Giant’s House, Nia­gara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Repli­ca of a Fig­ment of My Imag­i­na­tion, Thun­der­struck & Oth­er Sto­ries, Bowl­away, The Sou­venir Muse­um, and The Hero of This Book. She’s received grants and fel­low­ships from the Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, the Lig­uria Study Cen­ter, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Cen­ter in Province­town, and the Rad­cliffe Insti­tute for Advanced Study. Thun­der­struck & Oth­er Sto­ries won the 2015 Sto­ry Prize. Her work has been pub­lished in The Best Amer­i­can Short Sto­ries, The Push­cart Prize, The O. Hen­ry Prize, The New York Times Mag­a­zine, and many oth­er places. She teach­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, and in the low res­i­den­cy MFA pro­gram at Ben­ning­ton Col­lege. You can find her rather often, entire­ly too often, real­ly, on Twit­ter.

Raised in Brook­lyn, NY, Sab­ri­na Orah Mark earned a BA from Barnard Col­lege, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. She also earned an MFA from the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop, and a PhD in Eng­lish from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia. She is the author of the poet­ry col­lec­tions Tsim Tsum, and The Babies (win­ner of the Sat­ur­na­lia Book Prize). Her col­lec­tion of sto­ries, Wild Milk, won the Geor­gia Author of the Year Award for Short Sto­ry and was a final­ist for the Townsend Prize for Fic­tion. ​“Hap­pi­ly,” her col­lec­tion of essays on fairy­tales and moth­er­hood which began as a month­ly col­umn in The Paris Review, and recent­ly won a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award is avail­able here.

Mark’s accom­plish­ments include a Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts Fel­low­ship, a Sus­tain­able Arts Foun­da­tion Award, a fel­low­ship from the Fine Arts Work Cen­ter, and a Cre­ative Cap­i­tal Award. In addi­tion to teach­ing pri­vate work­shops she cur­rent­ly teach­es non­fic­tion, fic­tion, and poet­ry for the Ben­ning­ton Writ­ing Sem­i­nars. She lives in Athens, Geor­gia, with her hus­band, Regi­nald McK­night, and their two sons.

Mod­er­a­tor:

Josh Rolnick’s short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Pulp and Paper, won the John Sim­mons Short Fic­tion Award. His short sto­ries have also won the Arts & Let­ters Fic­tion Prize and The Flori­da Review Edi­tors’ Choice Prize, and have been pub­lished in Boule­vard, Merid­i­an, Har­vard Review, Belling­ham Review, Gulf Coast, and oth­ers. His short sto­ry, ​“Kinder­trans­port,” is forth­com­ing in Paper Brigade, the lit­er­ary annu­al of the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. Rolnick’s poem about the hostages left behind in Gaza, ​“But Not the Fathers,” was pub­lished in the Tel Aviv Review of Books; his essay about his daughter’s ele­men­tary school lock­down drills was pub­lished recent­ly in Slate. He is a fac­ul­ty lec­tur­er at the Johns Hop­kins MA in Writ­ing Pro­gram and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writ­ers’ Workshop.

About the Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance

The Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance is an inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion that will pro­vide resources and com­mu­ni­ty for Jew­ish writ­ers, and those writ­ing books of Jew­ish inter­est. The Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance aims to encour­age more writ­ers to write Jew­ish con­tent and explore what that might be, as well as pro­vide annu­al­ly updat­ed resources to con­nect pro­fes­sion­als and writ­ers and cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty. The Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Resource Cen­ter will also pro­vide infor­ma­tion on fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, res­i­dences, and events for the Jew­ish writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty. If you know of any resources for the Jew­ish writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty and would like them includ­ed in our Resource Cen­ter, please sub­mit them here!

The Alliance aims to sup­port a glob­al ecosys­tem of Jew­ish arts and cul­ture, with a spe­cif­ic focus on the lit­er­ary arts, ensur­ing writ­ers have the resources they need to write Jew­ish books, that read­ers are aware of these works, and that Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties and insti­tu­tions have the resources they need to cre­ate mean­ing­ful pro­grams and events around Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture. The Covid pan­dem­ic showed the ben­e­fits of con­nect­ing with peo­ple around the world and showed the pos­si­bil­i­ties of trans-Atlantic col­lab­o­ra­tions, some­thing upon which the Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance will expand.

The found­ing mem­bers of the GJLA are The Wingate Prize (UK), Jew­ish Book Coun­cil (US), JCC Asso­ci­a­tion of North Amer­i­ca (US and Cana­da) and JW3 (UK). Oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions will be invit­ed to join as mem­bers in the future.