Allegra Goodman
October 14 2004, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
Born in Brooklyn but raised in Hawaii, Allegra Goodman published her first book in 1989 while still an undergraduate at Harvard. Since then, she has written
The Family Markowitz, a collection of interlinked stories, and two acclaimed novels. In
Kaaterskill Falls, Elizabeth Shulman, a wife with five children, longs for a life outside her strict Orthodox community, while Rabbi Kirshner struggles to choose a successor. In
Paradise Park, a young woman abandoned by her boyfriend in Waikiki looks for enlightenment in all the wrong places. Goodman received a Whiting Writers' Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Jonathan Rosen
November 11 2004, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
Deborah Green is a rabbi who has been convinced since childhood that God lives within her, until, one evening, she looks at the moon and sees "a limbless bust of marble." Lev Friedman is a science writer who wants to learn the Kaddish prayer for his father, a Holocaust survivor who may not survive his own despair. In
Joy Comes in the Morning, Jonathan Rosen portrays Deborah and Lev's longing for faith and one another not as exotic romance, but as the classic American story. Rosen is the author of
The Talmud and the Internet and
Eve's Apple.
Amos Oz
December 6 2004, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
One of Israel's foremost authors, Amos Oz is the author of 19 books, including
My Michael, Black Box, and
The Same Sea. His new memoir,
A Tale of Love and Darkness, recounts his childhood in Jerusalem with parents who still longed for a life in Europe: "On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was the more cultured it was considered." Written in the allusive, fragmentary style of many of his novels, the memoir is both a story of a family coming apart and an artist coming of age.
André Aciman
January 26 2005, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
Perpetually displaced, André Aciman looks forward to longing. "This is how I always travel: not so as to experience anything at the time of my tour, but to plot the itinerary of a possible return trip," he writes in
False Papers, a collection of essays. In
Out of Egypt, he recounts his childhood in that country, where his family prospered for three generations before a new government forced them into exile. Aciman's writing has appeared in
The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and
Best American Essays.
At Home with Kafka: Three Modern Fables
Co-Sponsored By Book-It Repertory Theatre
February 24 2005, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
February 27 2005, 3:00 PM
Bellevue Regional Library
1111 110th Avenue Northeast, Bellevue
From biblical miracles to Kafka's giant bug, the wondrous has always had a central place in Jewish literature. In partnership with Book-It Repertory Theatre, Nextbook presents an evening of dramatic readings, featuring modern tales of the strange and fabulous by Bernard Malamud, Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer, and Steve Stern, along with short works by Kafka and I.L. Peretz. Book-It Repertory Theatre, currently celebrating its 15th Anniversary Season, turns great literature into great theater through simple and sensitive productions.
Savyon Liebrecht
March 9 2005, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
3rd Avenue and Union St., Seattle
Israeli novelist Savyon Liebrecht examines everyday lives caught within the forces of historical conflict—a Jewish woman who hires three Arabs to build an extension onto her home; a Holocaust survivor who ruins every party with tales of concentration camps; an Orthodox mother who visits her daughter on a secular kibbutz. Born in 1948 in Munich to Holocaust survivors, Liebrecht immigrated to Israel as an infant. Her books include
Apples from the Desert and
A Man and a Woman and a Man.
Tony Kushner
April 13 2005, 7:30 PM
Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
One of the most celebrated playwrights of the last 20 years, Tony Kushner joins the personal and political, tackling AIDS in
Angels in America; Afghanistan in
Homebody/Kabul; and, most recently, race and social revolution in the musical
Caroline, or Change. Kushner is also the author of
Brundibar, a children's book based on the 1938 opera, and co-editor of
Wrestling with Zion. He has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two Tony awards.