Join us for a con­ver­sa­tion about Mizrachi and Sephardic dias­poric jour­neys, both in fic­tion and real-life, with authors Jor­dan Sala­ma and Eliz­a­beth Graver. A per­son­al and intro­spec­tive dis­cus­sion explor­ing dis­place­ment, endurance, and fam­i­ly as home, while trav­el­ing (in our imag­i­na­tions) through Istan­bul, Barcelona, Havana, the Jew­ish Lev­ant, South Amer­i­ca, and the Argen­tine Andes. Mod­er­at­ed by Stephanie But­nick, host of Tablet​’s Unortho­dox podcast. 

Copies of both books will be avail­able for pur­chase and sign­ing at the event. To pur­chase a copy of Jor­dan Salama’s, Stranger in the Desert: A Fam­i­ly Sto­ry or Eliz­a­beth Graver’s nov­el Kan­ti­ka, please click here or here!

About the Speakers:

Eliz­a­beth Graver’s fifth nov­el, Kan­ti­ka, was select­ed as a New York Times Best His­tor­i­cal Fic­tion Book of 2023, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and an NPR Best Books of 2023. Kan­ti­ka has been trans­lat­ed into Ger­man and Turk­ish. Elizabeth’s fourth nov­el, The End of the Point, was long-list­ed for the 2013 Nation­al Book Award. She teach­es at Boston College.

Jor­dan Sala­ma is the author of Every Day the Riv­er Changes, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. His work has appeared in Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, The New York Times, Smith­son­ian, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, and on NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered. He lives in New York. An Amer­i­can writer of Argen­tine, Syr­i­an, and Iraqi Jew­ish descent, Sala­ma grad­u­at­ed from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 2019. He has been based, in recent years, between New York and Buenos Aires.

Stephanie But­nick is deputy edi­tor of Tablet Mag­a­zine and a host of the Unortho­dox pod­cast. She is the author, along with her co-hosts, of The Newish Jew­ish Ency­clo­pe­dia: From Abra­ham to Zabar’s and Every­thing in Between. She has writ­ten for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

This event is in part­ner­ship with Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, the Jew­ish Muse­um, and Tablet Mag­a­zine.