admin I was so excited to learn that Kantika had been selected as this year’s book for San Francisco’s Jewish Community Library’s “One Bay One Book 2023 program,” and even more excited when I saw the line-up of virtual lectures the program has organized around the themes of the book. Running from November through late Spring … Read more
I was so happy to get to talk about Kantika with author and podcaster G.P. Gottleib. She’s a wonderfully appreciative and perceptive reader, and she gave me the chance toward the end of the podcast to focus on the character of Luna, who was inspired by my wonderful aunt, Luna Leibowitz. Luna was born in … Read more
I was delighted to get to have a substantive conversation about Kantika, my writing practice, weathering rejection, favorite words and more with the wonderful interviewer and reader Mitzi Rapkin, whose podcast, “First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing,” I’ve long admired. You can get a taste of our conversation at this link at Literary Hub and … Read more
I had a wonderful conversation with Michael Tusa, who has a radio show on WRBH Reading Radio in New Orleans. I loved hearing about the station, whose mission is (to quote from the website) “to turn the printed word into the spoken word so that the blind and print impaired can receive the same access … Read more
Debby Waldman is my beloved friend from long ago days when we were both grad students studying writing and literature at Cornell. Though we live far from each other and only manage to see each other every few years, we always start up right where we left off, our visits filled with talk talk talk—about … Read more
I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Brittany White on the Ottoman History Podcast. Earlier episodes featuring the work of Ottoman scholars, among them Devin Naar, Sarah Abrevaya Stein and my Boston College colleague Dana Sajdi (who introduced me to the podcast), were wonderful resources to me as I researched and wrote Kantika, … Read more
What a pleasure it was to get to talk about Kantika last week with Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, as part of the Sandra Seltzer Silberman Conversation Series. I had the gift of a fellowship at the HBI way back in 2014 when I was in the early stages of writing this … Read more
In which I muse on our field of horses in The Boston Globe. Read my essay here (apologies for the fact that some of the images don’t translate to the PDF; you can also read the piece online if you subscribe to the Boston Globe).
I wrote an essay for Zibby Magazine about the process of writing Kantika—over a span of 40 years!! You can read it here!
I wrote an essay for the Jewish Book Council on the quite extraordinary experience I had while I was doing research for Kantika of finding my family, unattributed, in a 1929 film I stumbled upon in the National Center for Jewish Film. You can read the essay here.
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