Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Two endeav­ors from the Hadas­sah-Bran­deis Insti­tute worth check­ing out:

Jew­ish Fic­tion Goes Out­side of the Box

For the 2nd annu­al issue on Jew­ish books, 614: The HBI eZine found young Jew­ish women who were writ­ing about themes we haven’t seen dozens of times. This is why you’ll find men­tion in this issue of cow­boys, Madame Bovary, a mod­ern day Jew­ish heiress, a 12-year-old Iran­ian, Jew­ish spies, and a hero­ic Ger­man bak­er. Rather than post book reviews, we talked to the authors behind these sto­ries and asked them about the inspi­ra­tions for their books, and also what they think about today’s Jew­ish fic­tion in gen­er­al. Meet Joan­na Her­shon, Tova Mirvis, Lau­rie Gwen Shapiro, Dara Horn, Jen­na Blum, and Gina Nahai. For more infor­ma­tion, please click here.

HBI Announces Book Trans­la­tion Com­pe­ti­tion

The Hadas­sah-Bran­deis Insti­tute is pleased to announce an annu­al com­pe­ti­tion to trans­late a book on a top­ic that deals in a sig­nif­i­cant way with Jews and gen­der. The amount of mon­ey that will be award­ed is con­tin­gent on the par­tic­u­lar trans­la­tion needs of the book. The award goes exclu­sive­ly towards the trans­la­tion costs. Appli­ca­tions are due by Novem­ber 15, 2009, and deci­sions will be announced by Feb­ru­ary 15, 2010. For guide­lines and sub­mis­sion instruc­tions, please click here.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.