Literary Modiin - November 2021 Author Event

Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirtysix, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.

Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. Her debut poetry collection, WOLF LAMB BOMB (Orison Books, 2021), was named a "New and Noteworthy" book by The New York Times. Her first book, The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau), was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Sami Rohr Prize Finalist, and one of Publishers' Weekly's Top 10 Religion Stories of the Year. She is The Forward's language columnist and is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Iddo Gefen was born in 1992 in Israel and currently resides in Tel Aviv. He works in neurocognitive research at the The Immersive Media & Cognition Group in Sagol Brain Institute, Sourasky Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, exploring how storytelling can improve our understanding of the human mind. Iddo leads an innovative study to diagnose aspects of Parkinson’s disease using storytelling and augmented reality. Jerusalem Beach is his debut collection, and recipient of the Israeli Minister of Culture Award (2017); Iddo won the National Library of Israel “Pardes” Scholarship for young writers (2019). His debut novel, Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory, will be published by Astra House in 2023. Film and TV rights of several stories from Jerusalem Beach were sold to leading Hollywood production companies.