Breakout Sessions

Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4

In Conversation | Fresh Fiction
With Amy Bloom and Lore Segal

Moderated by Barbara Lane

Amy Bloom - Away
Nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bloom's stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Away is the "wild emigrant adventure" of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent and accidental heroine.

Lore Segal - Shakespeare's Kitchen
Shakespeare's Kitchen, serialized in The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the newest book by acclaimed author Lore Segal.

Barbara Lane is Director of Lectures & Literature at the JCCSF.

BookFest Talk | Shut Up, I'm Talking
With Gregory Levey

Gregory Levey - Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lesons I Learned in the Israeli Government
Salon writer Gregory Levey began as a speechwriter for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations and later for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Blindingly funny and sometimes horrifying, Shut Up, I'm Talking is a peek at the inner workings of the Knesset.

In Conversation | The Rise of Radical Islam
With David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann

David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann - Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam
Resurrecting Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem also known as "the führer of the Arab world," Dalin and Rothmann provide evidence that al-Husseini's legacy of violence against Jews lives on today in Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.

BookFest Talk | Resurrecting Hebrew
With Ilan Stavans

Ilan Stavans - Resurrecting Hebrew
Resurrecting Hebrew, the stirring story of how Hebrew was rescued from the fate of a dead language to become the living tongue of a modern nation, is the latest book by Mexican-born Ilan Stavans.

In Conversation | Family Matters
With Marie Brenner and Anne Roiphe

Moderated by Leah L. Garchik

Marie Brenner - Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found
Vanity Fair writer at large Marie Brenner's Apples and Oranges is an absorbing account of her fractious relationship with her brother and a meditation on family and fate.

Anne Roiphe - Epilogue
Anne Roiphe was not quite 70 when her husband of 40 years suddenly collapsed and died in their apartment. Eloquent, astute and radiating with raw emotion, Epilogue tells the story of love rekindled and life remade.

Leah L. Garchik is a daily columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle.

BookFest Talk | Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin
With Emil Draitser, in English

Emil Draitser - Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin: A Memoir
Growing up in a post-Holocaust Soviet Union, "shush!" was the word Draitser knew best: "Don't use your Jewish name in public. Don't speak a word of Yiddish. And don't cry over your murdered relatives."

BookFest Talk | Unholy Business
With Nina Burleigh

Nina Burleigh - Unholy Busines
A limestone box discovered in 2002 and once trumpeted as material evidence of Jesus's existence is now considered the fraud of the century. In Unholy Business, a real-life Da Vinci Code, Burleigh uncovers the secrets, dirty deals and extreme prejudice of the biblical antiquities trade.

In Conversation | Coming of Age in America
With Roger Bennett and Benjamin Nugent

Moderated by Dan Wolf

Roger Bennett - Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies
Roger Bennett (Bar Mitzvah Disco) is back. Rich with photographs, memorabilia, and tales from former campers, Camp Camp is a chance to re-live every Champion^© sweatshirt-wearing, accidental-bedwetting, sky-hook-wedgie-receiving, tie-dye-making golden moment.

Benjamin Nugent - American Nerd: The Story of My People
What is a nerd? Nugent claims "Jewish" and "nerdy" are no longer interchangeable, "but if you look at the most popular prototypes of nerds and you look at old anti-Semitic cartoons, it's surprising how much they look the same."

Dan Wolf is the Program Manager of The Hub.

In Conversation | The Woody Allen of Las Pampas
With Marcelo Birmajer

Interviewed by Ilan Stavans

Marcelo Birmajer - The Three Musketers (Tres Mosqueteros)
One of Argentina's most prolific and praised young writers, Birmajer uniquely combines machismo, self-irony and Jewish humor. He is both a screenwriter and the author of more than 20 books.

Ilan Stavans is the host of PBS's La Plaza: Conversations with Ilan Stavans and is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.

In Conversation | Defeating Hitler
With Avraham Burg

Interviewed by Michael Krasny

Avraham Burg - The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes
The Speaker of the Knesset (1999 - 2003) claims the Jewish nation has lost the ability to trust itself and the world around it. With the Middle East embroiled in violence, he proposes that the Law of Return, which maintains Israel as the Jewish state, be reconsidered.

Michael Krasny is host of KQED Radio's Forum and author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life.

BookFest Talk | Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin
With Emil Draitser, in Russian

Emil Draitser - Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin: A Memoir
Growing up in a post-Holocaust Soviet Union, "shush!" was the word Draitser knew best: "Don't use your Jewish name in public. Don't speak a word of Yiddish. And don't cry over your murdered relatives."

BookFest Talk | Benjamin Disraeli
With Adam Kirsch

Adam Kirsch - Benjamin Disraeli
A man of political and sexual intrigue, both baptized and yet maintaining a part of his Jewish identity, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881) was a captivating figure. Poet and New York Sun book critic Adam Kirsch portrays Disraeli as an argument for the emancipation of European Jewry and evidence of its impossibility.

In Conversation | Why Faith Matters
With Rabbi David J. Wolpe

Interviewed by Rabbi David Levinsky

Rabbi David J. Wolpe - Why Faith Matters
Is faith a simplistic answer for the intellectually weak? Best-selling author Rabbi David J. Wolpe answers that, historically, religion has in fact sparked believers to ask ever more difficult questions, even as it blossomed into a canopy of hope.

Rabbi David Levinsky is Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Life at the JCCSF.

In Conversation | The Jewish Messiah
With Arnon Grunberg

Interviewed by Ruth Franklin

Arnon Grunberg - The Jewish Messiah (De Joodse Mesias)
Arnon Grunberg, internationally acclaimed Dutch author and winner of the AKO Literature Prize and the Anton Wachter Prize, is one of literature's sharpest satirists and wily provocateurs.

Ruth Franklin is a senior editor at The New Republic.

BookFest Panel | The Raconteurs and the Art of Storytelling
With Etgar Keret, Eileen Pollack and Irina Reyn

Moderated by Peter Orner

Etgar Keret - The Girl on the Fridge
Etgar Keret's mordant and hilarious short stories have earned him the encomium "the voice of young Israel."

Eileen Pollack - In the Mouth: Stories and Novellas
Featured in this year's The Best American Short Stories, Eileen Pollack's In the Mouth is a forthright collection about family relationships, intimacies and secrets.

Irina Reyn - What Happened to Anna K.
In What Happened to Anna K., Irina Reyn transplants Tolstoy's "Great Russian Soul" to a Jewish enclave in Queens, with an updated heroine who the San Francisco Chronicle described as "human and wonderfully alive."

Peter Orner is the author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and editor of Underground America.

In Conversation | The End of The Jew as Metaphor
With Vivian Gornick

Interviewed by Chana Bloch

Vivian Gornick - The Men in My Life
A fine critic and leading figure of second-wave feminism, Vivian Gornick argues that authors like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow became voices of the Jewish immigrant experience by raging against a world trying to keep them out. Today, she says, there is really nothing to write about.

In Conversation | Letting God In
With Louis Ferrante and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Moderated by Deena Aranoff

Louis Ferrante - Unlocked: A Journey from Prison to Proust
Louis Ferrante, New York gang leader and associate of the Gambino crime family, pulled off some of the most lucrative robberies in American history. Serving eight years in prison, he read his first book, studied religion and emerged an Orthodox Jew.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg - Surprised By God: How I learned to Stop Worying and Love Religion
Author of Yentl's Revenge, Danya Ruttenberg's Surprised by God is the story of a young woman's semi-reluctant path to the rabbinate - from the mosh pit to the Mission District and beyond.

Deena Aranoff is an assistant professor of medieval Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union.

In Conversation | California Moguls
With Fred E. Basten and Frances Dinkelspiel

Moderated by Janis Cooke Newman

Fred E. Basten - Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World
In a rags-to-riches story for Hollywood devotees and cosmetics junkies, Basten recounts the life of Max Factor (born: Max Faktor) from an obscure mill town near Lodz to escape from Russian anti-Semitism in the forests of Bohemia to Tinseltown.

Frances Dinkelspiel - Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Imigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California
Dinkelspiel's biography of her great-great-grandfather is a vivid portrait of the financier who built up Wells Fargo Bank and changed California. Towers of Gold's stagecoach robberies, assassination attempts, bank runs and account of the 1906 earthquake will forever alter your perception of downtown San Francisco.

Janis Cooke Newman is the bestselling author of Mary and The Russian Word for Snow.

In Conversation | Shedding New Light on Dark Times
With Mimi Schwartz and Suzanne Vromen

Moderated by Diane L. Wolf

Mimi Schwartz - Good Neighbors Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village
Exposing tensions between German generations and the struggle to remember a holocaust others would insistently forget, Mimi Schwartz tells the satisfying tale of a woman in search of her roots but finding so much more.

Suzanne Vromen - Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and their Daring Rescue of Yo ung Jews from the Nazis
Creating a vivid picture of Jewish children that were hidden in Belgian convents during World War II, Suzanne Vromen resurrects printed records and interviews with the children and the nuns who hid them.

Diane L. Wolf is Professor of Sociology at UC Davis and the author of Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland.