Jewish Book Festival Has Gone Virtual Now

Get ready for a literary treat from the comfort of your home! The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival (Feb. 6-10, 2022) will warm up your winter nights with fascinating authors from across Canada, USA, Israel, Australia & Great Britain.

The big themes emerge organically from the world around us: investigating the rise of the new anti-Semitism, exploring diverse identities and the formative place of the Holocaust there; and in this light, unpacking some parallels between the Jewish and the Indigenous experience.

Featured 2022 Festival authors will include: a?? Opening Event with a duo of brilliant polemicists: American novelist & journalist DARA HORN (with her book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present ) and British comedian and writer David Baddiel (with his book Jews Don 't Count). Our annual Book Clubs event will feature bestselling Australian author Heather Morris with her novel Three Sisters, the last in the Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy that has taken the world by storm. For our Closing Night, DANIEL SOKATCH, an expert who understands both sides of one of the world's most complex and controversial topics the Israeli-Palestianian conflict will present Can We Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused and Conflicted. There are many quests among the books featured this year: winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction GARY BARWIN brings us Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, an eccentric and deeply felt exploration of genocide, persecution, colonialism and masculinity, saturated in his sharp wit and perfect pun-play; together with US author JAI CHAKRABARTI whose A Play for the End of the World, takes his protagonist's quest all the way to India in a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present. Short stories will be celebrated in an event with Vancouver's RACHEL ROSE and her collection The Octopus Has Three Hearts, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, together with Montreal's AMI SANDS BRODOFF presenting her intricately linked stories in The Sleep of Apples. From Toronto, novelist and cultural critic HAL NIEDZVIECKI will discuss his latest novel The Lost Expert, situated at the intersection between pop culture, media and individuality. Fascinating stories of artists caught in the treacherous web of WWII will be presented by two US writers sharing a historical fiction subject: bestselling author MEG WAITE CLAYTON with The Postmistress of Paris and painter/writer MICHAELA CARTER with Leonora in the Morning Light. History continues to have a very important place in our mind: LEAH GARRETT will present X-Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II, (a real historical inspiration for Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds!) and MENACHEM KAISER, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Non-Fiction will take us through the gripping story of retrieving a lost treasur in Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure. Our wonderful BC authors will be represented by ISA MILMAN with her memoir Afterlight: In Search of Poetry, History and Home, RACHEL MINES with her translation of Jonah Rosenfeld's The Rivals and Other Stories; and, in an Epilogue with profound interlaced roots in our community, ROBERT KRELL will launch his memoir Sounds from Silence and ALAN TWIGG, his comprehensive literary history Out Of Hiding: Holocaust Literature Of British Columbia, an event moderated by local Renaissance man YOSEF WOSK. We're forging ahead with many other authors, events and genres.

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"We look forward to welcoming our audiences to the joyful experience of a shared literary event! The Jewish Book Festival strives to reflect and showcase recent literature that revels in the lively and pivotal ideas stemming from the modern world, and in the process expose our city and community to meaningful and captivating conversations about the written word in every shape and form" says Festival Director, Dana Camil Hewitt. "And while the nucleus of our festival is Jewish-themed, our speakers, events and audience happily represent a diversity of experiences and cultures that defy narrow categorization. We are attuned to timely and universal themes and we thrive on the interdisciplinary, always inviting visual arts and performance art into our events".

Mark your calendars now! Regular updates can be found on the website at www.jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival where the digital program guide is available.