On Wednesday, November 2, 2011, a panel of five award winning authors will discuss the hallmarks of Jewish identity in their writing, as well as the historical and contemporary role of the writer in Jewish literature. This special evening will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by brief readings from each author and a lively panel discussion and Q&A, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The evening is presented by Inland & Desert Hillel and the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert and UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts.
Panel will be comprised of Authors and UCR Faculty:
Judy Kronenfeld, UCR Lecturer Emerita, is a poet and writer of fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as an Associate Editor of the online poetry magazine, Poemeleon. Her books of poetry include, Ghost Nurseries (Finishing Line Press), Disappeared Down Dark Wells and Still Falling (Inevitable Press), and Shadow of Wings (Bellflower Press). Her second full collection of poetry, Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, won the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Award.
David Ulin is Book Critic and former Book Editor of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Are So Important In Distracted Times and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a Best Book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles” and “Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered; his essay The Half-Birthday of the Apocalypse was nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize. Most recently he edited the anthology Cape Cod Noir for Akashic Books. David is a core member of UCR Palm Desert low residency MFA Creative Writing faculty.
Andrew Winer is the author of the novels The Marriage Artist and The Color Midnight Made, and Chair of the Creative Writing department at UCR. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, he occasionally writes about artists, composers, thinkers, and other writers. He is working on a new novel about religion and politics.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry: American Linden, The Pajamaist, and Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon, Fall 2010), as well as co-translator from Romanian, along with historian Radu Ioanid, of Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu. He has received a William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. An editor for Wave Books and a member of the core faculty in the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside, Palm Desert.
The Panel will be moderated by UCR Palm Desert MFA Director, Tod Goldberg, who is the author of nine books of fiction, including the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV) and the popular Burn Notice (Penguin) series as well as the short story collections Simplify (Other Voices Books), a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize and Other Resort Cities (Other Voices Books). Tod Goldberg directs the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside, Palm Desert.
This evening will provide unique insight into the work of these authors, each discussing what drives the decisions they make about their work. “The importance of the written word has long been a tradition of Jewish culture,” Goldberg says. “As both witness and victim to history, the power and question of identity has become a reoccurring theme for contemporary Jewish novelists, poets and memoirists.”
This event is free to the public, refreshments provided by Sherman’s Deli, Bakery & Catering of Palm Desert.
Hillel is the largest Campus Jewish organization in the world. The Inland and Desert Hillel branch serves the students of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties to explore and celebrate what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
UCR Palm Desert, established in 2005, provides graduate education to the Coachella Valley through its innovative Low Residency MFA and EMBA degrees. UCR Palm Desert is located at 75-080 Frank Sinatra Drive (at Cook Street). For more information, see the full press release or visit www.palmdesert.ucr.edu or call 760-834-0800.
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