Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Jewish literature is deep into a renaissance. Jewish books and Jewish authors are no longer ethnic tokens on a larger bookshelf, but are establishing themselves in their own right, from the critical success of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union to the already-canonical Everything Is Illuminated. Contemporary Jewish authors are telling new and mindblowing stories, earning praise from critics and readers — both among Jewish and general audiences — and breaking down the walls of what constitutes a “Jewish book.”

MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council would like to introduce you to some of these authors.

Every other week, we’ll be bringing you voices from the new Jewish literary scene. They’ll be as diverse as the term itself: fiction and nonfiction, deathly funny and deathly serious, politics and music, poetry and pirates. Some writers will share personal stories about writing their books. Others will share B-sides and DVD-style extras. Still others might blog about their lives, or current events, or the awesome stage-dive they took at the concert last night.

The only things that our guest bloggers have in common are that they all take the idea of Judaism in their own direction, and they all spark the dynamite of our imaginations.

We hope you’ll agree with us.

We’re honored to start the series off with David Plotz, a journalist and the editor of Slate magazine. Recently, he set himself upon a not insurmountable task: to read, from first to last page, the entire Bible. His quest is chronicled in a new book–called, appropriately enough, Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. It’s part memoir, part textual exegesis, and–like the original Jewish literary criticism of biblical and talmudic commentaries–partly its own original vault of wisdom.

So come back all week, and check out Mr. Plotz’s blogs. Let him know what you think in the comments section…or just come back tomorrow.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

The Book of Life podcast shares new Jewish books for adults here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

This year’s crop of Network authors are sure getting lots of media attention! This round of Network news includes:

1)Daniel Asa Rose (Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With My Black-Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant…and Save His Life) writes an op-ed for The New York Times on organ transplants here

2)Arianne Cohen (The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From on High) and Howard Blum (American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, and the Birth of Hollywood) on the Paper Cuts Book Blog podcast here

(Thanks to our intern, Rebecca Blady, for finding these two pieces!)

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Network author David Eagleman, author of Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, answers “Stray Questions” for the New York Times Book Blog “Paper Cuts."

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Network author Sarah Wendell, co-founder of the “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books” blog and co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, featured in USA Today:

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Naomi at the Jewish Publication Society just started a new series on the JPS Blog, where she asks JPS authors to recommend a list of ten books related to the subject matter they’ve written about themselves. She posted her first entry today, which featured Maggie Anton. To view Maggie Anton’s top 10 books about Jewish women, please visit here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Words Without Borders’ translation of Eduardo Halfon’s “The Polish Boxer”–translated from the Spanish by Ezra Fitz:

69752. That it was his phone number. That it was tattooed there, on his left forearm, so he wouldn’t forget it. That’s what my grandfather told me. And that’s what I grew up believing. In the seventies, the country’s phone numbers were all five digits.

To continue reading, please visit here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will present a book-a-day blog on the Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

The Foundation for Jewish Culture’s application for the ninth annual Goldberg Prize for Emerging Writers of Jewish Fiction 2009 is now available to be downloaded; completed submissions are due July 31st by 4:00 PM.

The winner will receive a prize of $2,500 and a one-week residency at Ledig House International Writers Colony in upstate New York.

To download the application, please visit here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Jewish Week’s Book Critic Sandee Brawarsky offers some Summer book suggestions here.