Sydney Jewish Writers Festival returns for 2024
Highlights include talks with local and international authors and new Jewish book awards, Sharyn Kolieb writes.
Shalom’s Sydney Jewish Writers Festival will take place from August 21 to 25 at the Bondi Pavilion with an exciting line up of writers, journalists, creatives and artists exploring the theme of “Genesis”. The festival, supported by The Australian Jewish News, will include more than 25 Australian-based speakers along with prominent international writers across 26 events.
The opening night on August 21 features best-selling author Dr Sarah Krasnostein in conversation with Michaela Kalowski, exploring writing and the ethical dimensions of factual storytelling. Known for The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, On Peter Carey and the long-form essay Peace in the Home, Krasnostein explores the text of Genesis, origin stories and psychological foundations in her work.
The international guests include acclaimed authors Marina Benjamin, Rabbi Dr Ariel Burger and Hila Blum. Benjamin writes personal essays, memoir, creative non-fiction and, most recently, a trilogy of books exploring midlife experience – The Middlepause, Insomnia and A Little Give.
Burger is an author, teacher, and artist whose work integrates spirituality, the arts and strategies for social change. He is the author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom and the founding director and senior scholar of The Witness Institute. A lifelong student of Elie Wiesel, Burger served as his teaching fellow from 2003-2008. He also developed arts and educational programming for adults, and was one of The Algemeiner’s Top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life today.
Blum is an Israeli author, journalist, literary critic and book editor at one of Israel’s leading publishing houses. She is the winner of the Sapir Prize (2022), Israel’s most prestigious literary award and the Prime Minister’s Prize (2021). Blum is the author of Israeli bestsellers The Visit and How to Love Your Daughter.
How to Love You Daughter has received international critical acclaim and is about an Israeli mother (Yoella) who becomes estranged from her only daughter (Leah) and her grandchildren. In the book, Yoella, as narrator, interrogates her memories to try and uncover what has led to the estrangement.
Speaking with The AJN about the book, Blum shared the inspiration behind it. “I was so completely in love with my daughter, I still am to be honest … [I was] thinking what would happen if at a certain point in time I will look back and see that something has changed, or come between us, and things are not going to be the way I hoped … What would happen if I looked back and see that something went wrong or even badly wrong and I won’t be able to trace it … That’s exactly the theme I set out to explore and to write about through a fictional story.”
This year the festival is also launching the Shalom Australian Jewish Book Awards. “These awards were established to recognise excellence in contemporary Australian writing on Jewish subjects; to promote the reading of these texts; and to inspire and support current and future Australian authors on Jewish subjects,” Sydney Jewish Writers Festival director Anna Stern commented.
The winners of two prizes, the Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Non-Fiction and The Jewish Independent Young Jewish Writers Award will be announced at the festival.
The shortlist for The Jewish Independent Young Jewish Writers Award 2024 includes Dr Anna Jacobson for Anxious in a Sweet Store, Melissa Levi for We Need to talk about Ageing, Dr Roz Bellamy for Mood and Tami Sussman for So That Happened … But Maybe you Knew That.
Other highlights at this year’s festival include “Mysterious Tales from the Yiddish Avant-Garde” with Yiddish scholar Dr Nathan Wolski presenting a bilingual reading, accompanied by artworks by Melbourne artist Anita Lester; and “Jewish Millennial Angst” with Nadine J. Cohen, Bellamy and Jacobson discussing the rise of mental health themes in Jewish novels and memoirs, challenges that young Jewish writers face and contemporary Jewish representation in literature.
There will also be creative workshops including “Deep Reading: a Talmudic Approach to Literature” with Dr Simon Holloway, “Turning the Inward Outward: a Writing Workshop” with Marina Benjamin and a free workshop “Write & Sip” with Bellamy.
On the importance of providing a platform for Jewish creatives to discuss their work at this time, Stern said, “This year’s festival is an opportunity to showcase our talented writers and creatives and to provide a supportive environment for them. We seek to do this in a variety of ways this festival, from featuring authors to creating safe spaces for discussion, debate and exploration across a range of topics.”
For more information visit: shalom.edu.au/event/sjwf-2024
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