What do you do when your life takes an 180 degree turn, and sud­den­ly, every­thing you thought you knew, you don’t? Join Ben Markovits and Jes­si­ca Bril­liant Keen­er in a con­ver­sa­tion with Stephanie But­nick about major life changes, find­ing your­self when your world turns around, and what we learn about our­selves when every­thing we thought we knew changes in a moment.

Ben Markovits was born in Texas and grew up there and in Lon­don and Berlin. He stud­ied at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford. After grad­u­at­ing, he became a pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball play­er in Land­shut, Ger­many (where he played against a young Dirk Now­itz­ki). His eleven pre­vi­ous nov­els include Fathers and Daugh­ters, You Don’t Have to Live Like This, and The Side­kick. He has pub­lished essays, sto­ries, poet­ry, and reviews in The Guardian, Gran­ta, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among oth­ers. In 2013, Gran­ta select­ed him as one of their Best of Young British Nov­el­ists and in 2015 he won the Eccles British Library Writer in Res­i­dence Award and the James Tait Black Memo­r­i­al Prize. He lives in Lon­don and teach­es cre­ative writ­ing at Roy­al Hol­loway, Uni­ver­si­ty of London.

Jes­si­ca Bril­liant Keen­er’s best­selling debut nov­el, Night Swim, was fol­lowed by her col­lec­tion of award-win­ning sto­ries, Women in Bed. Her sec­ond nov­el, Strangers in Budapest, was an Indie Next pick, a South­ern Inde­pen­dent Book­seller Asso­ci­a­tion best­seller, and a ​“best new book” selec­tion by Enter­tain­ment Week­ly. She has been list­ed in The Push­cart Prize under ​‘out­stand­ing writ­ers’ and grant­ed writ­ing fel­low­ships from the Mass­a­chu­setts Cul­tur­al Coun­cil, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, the Vir­ginia Cen­ter for the Cre­ative Arts, as well as a wom­en’s lead­er­ship fel­low­ship from the Omega Insti­tute in New York. Her more than 100 fea­ture arti­cles and essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscen­ti, O mag­a­zine, Lilith mag­a­zine, Psy­chol­o­gy Today, and the anthol­o­gy: Alone Togeth­er, win­ner of the 2021 Wash­ing­ton State Book Prize. Jes­si­ca lives with her hus­band, an attor­ney, in Brook­line, MA.

The Unpack­ing the Book series is in part­ner­ship with Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, the Jew­ish Muse­um, and GOL­DA, your Jew­ish Lifestyle Guide.