Join the Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Alliance for a con­ver­sa­tion with Manya Wilkin­son and Ayelet Tsabari on being sto­ry­tellers, their jour­neys into the writ­ing world, what inspires them, and how their approach­es to writ­ing dif­fer. The con­ver­sa­tion will dis­cuss their approach­es to writ­ing their books, how they chose these sto­ries to tell, and why telling Jew­ish sto­ries, and these spe­cif­ic Jew­ish sto­ries, is so impor­tant, right now and always. This con­ver­sa­tion will be mod­er­at­ed by Emi­ly Kas­riel, author of Deep Lis­ten­ing: Trans­form your Rela­tion­ships with Fam­i­ly, Friends and Foes.

To pur­chase one or either of these authors books, please click here!

Speak­ers:

Ayelet Tsabari is the author of Songs for the Bro­ken­heart­ed, win­ner of a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for fic­tion and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries Fic­tion Award. Her mem­oir, The Art of Leav­ing, was a final­ist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary West­on Prize and The Vine Awards, win­ner of the Cana­di­an Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Award for mem­oir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, the sto­ry col­lec­tion The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jew­ish Lit­er­a­ture, and the Edward Lewis Wal­lant Award for Jew­ish Fic­tion. The book was a New York Times Book Review Edi­tors’ Choice and was nom­i­nat­ed for The Frank O’Connor Inter­na­tion­al Short Sto­ry Award. She’s the co-edi­tor of the award-win­ning anthol­o­gy Tongues: On Long­ing and Belong­ing Through Lan­guage. Ayelet teach­es cre­ative writ­ing at The Uni­ver­si­ty of King’s Col­lege MFA and at Guelph MFA in Cre­ative Writing.

Manya Wilkin­son is a Jew­ish New York­er liv­ing in New­cas­tle, where she was senior lec­tur­er in prose and scriptwrit­ing. She’s the author of a nov­el (Ocean Avenue), short sto­ries, and many plays and radio dra­mas (broad­cast on BBC Radio 4, After­noon Play, Sat­ur­day Dra­ma, Writ­ing the Cen­tu­ry, and Woman’s Hour).

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 to explore what that might be, as well as to pro­vide annu­al­ly updat­ed resources to con­nect pro­fes­sion­als and writ­ers and to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty. The Glob­al Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Resource Cen­ter will also pro­vide infor­ma­tion on fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, res­i­den­cies, 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 mem­bers of the GJLA are The Wingate Prize (UK), Jew­ish Book Coun­cil (US), JCC Asso­ci­a­tion of North Amer­i­ca (US and Cana­da) and Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tion (UK).