FREE EVENT

Qesher Book Club: "Kantika - History Into Fiction, A Sephardic Journey"

Tuesday, January 9

USA 12:00 pm PT / 3:00 pm ET

UK 8:00 pm / France 09:00 pm / Israel 10:00 pm

The talk will last approximately 60 minutes

About this talk

Elizabeth Graver's novel, Kantika ("song" in Ladino) was inspired by her grandmother Rebecca, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and whose tumultuous and shape-shifting life journey took her to Spain, Cuba, and New York. For Elizabeth, the process of writing Kantika was also a journey. She interviewed relatives and strangers, traveled to Turkey, Spain and Cuba, and read deeply to better understand the worlds of the novel. In this talk, she will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the writing of Kantika and discuss some of its central themes, among them music and language crossings, ideas of home, resilience and joy, and the rich, vanishing culture of Turkish Sephardic Jews.

About the Author

Elizabeth Graver's fifth novel, is a New York Times Editor's Choice and the 2023 selection for San Francisco's One Bay One Book Program. Elizabeth's fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. She teaches at Boston College. https://elizabethgraver.com/

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*This event will also be live-streamed on Facebook