BOOK LAUNCH

Wednesday, February 24, 1:00 – 2:00pm
MIRA SUCHAROV/ Borders and Belonging: A Memoir
In conversation with MAX SUCHAROV
FREE – Register here | Purchase the book
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WALDMAN LIBRARY
VIRTUAL LUNCH & LEARN with JCC Adults Department
In this gripping and honest memoir, Mira Sucharov shows what a search for political and emotional home looks like. Sucharov suffered from childhood phobias triggered by her parents’ divorce, and she sought emotional refuge in Jewish summer camp. But 3 years spent living in Israel in her twenties shook her to her core. Ultimately, encounters with colleagues, students, friends and lovers force her to confront what it means to be able to write, advocate and teach about Israel/Palestine in a way that balances affirmation with authenticity. This engaging work builds on the author’s successful voice as a scholar and public commentator to find politically engaging ways of discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict.
MIRA SUCHAROV is Professor of Political Science and University Chair of Teaching Innovation at Carleton University. She is the author or editor of five books and her many op-eds have appeared in Haaretz, The Forward, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, etc.
MAX SUCHAROV is a psychoanalytic psychiatrist in Vancouver with a special interest in both trauma and the socio-political dimension of emotional suffering.
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FOR BOOK CLUBS AND ALL BOOK LOVERS

Wednesday, February 24, 6:00 – 7:00pm
ANNA SOLOMON / The Book of V
In conversation with RHEA TREGEBOV
Get Tickets | Purchase the book
Each year at Purim, we tell the story of Esther, the Jewish orphan who rose to the throne of Persia and interceded with her husband to save her people from annihilation. Usually framed as a Cinderella-type story, the biblical account is less family-friendly: Esther is chosen to replace the disgraced queen Vashti, who refused a royal command to parade naked before a company of drunken men.
In this bold, kaleidoscopic novel, Anna Solomon interweaves the Biblical story of Esther and Vashti with those of two other women: Lily, a 40-something wife and mother in contemporary Brooklyn, and Vee, a young senator’s wife in Watergate-era Washington. Their stories of power, desire and sex overlap and ultimately converge in the present day, as “she reaches across centuries to capture the timeliness and timelessness of being a strong, passionate woman in a world governed by men. How far we’ve come and yet how many of the battles look the same”
We’ll be listening to Anna the day before the Purim holiday, for a new and unexpected take on its history, in an engrossing, highly readable, and darkly sexy novel.
ANNA SOLOMON is the author of Leaving Lucy Pear and The Little Bride and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, One Story, Slate, and more. She lives in Brooklyn.
RHEA TREGEBOV is the winner of the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2020. She is the author of fiction, poetry and children’s books.
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CREATIVITY RUNS IN THE FAMILY
Wednesday, February 24, 8:00 – 9:30pm
NAOMI ELIANA POMMIER STEINBERG / Goosefeather: Once Upon a Cartographic Adventure
MYRIAM STEINBERG / Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility
Moderator: Lani Brunn
Get Tickets

NAOMI ELIANA POMMIER STEINBERG / Goosefeather: Once Upon a Cartographic Adventure | Purchase the book
What begins as an effort to understand family history becomes a joyous and surprising round-the-world adventure, as a renowned storyteller attempts to query whether art can cross physical, cultural and emotional borders.
Storyteller and performer Naomi Steinberg’s pilgrimage starts in Rousillon, the small French village where her grandfather saved her Jewish grandmother from the Nazis in World War II.
Goosefeather is a remarkable travelogue and memoir, chronicling Steinberg’s 382 day adventure around the world by road and rail, land and sea (without air travel), performing a playful and profound one-woman show that questions the very nature of modern connection. Candid and compassionate, Goosefeather shares the ups and downs of an extraordinary year of global travel and an uplifting look at how stories can resonate across even the most enormous distances – thus bringing us all closer together.
NAOMI STEINBERG is an internationally recognized artist and storyteller. Of French and Jewish descent, she has brought traditional folk stories, fairy tales and community-based art projects to life in countries around the world since 2001. Goosefeather is her first book.
SPONSORED BY DANIELLA GIVON AND BERNARD PINSKY
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MYRIAM STEINBERG / Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility | Purchase the book OR Purchase the book
Illustrator: CHRISTACHE
A deeply moving, tragicomic graphic memoir about a single woman’s efforts to conceive. A few months after Myriam turned forty, she decided she couldn’t wait any longer to become a mother and made the difficult decision to begin the process of conceiving a child without a partner, with her family and friends to support her.
But in her journey Myriam experienced the soaring highs and devastating lows of becoming pregnant and then losing her babies. She experienced first-hand the silences, loneliness, and taboos that come with experiences of fetal loss. Unafraid to publicize her experiences, she found that friends and strangers alike started sharing their own fertility stories with her. Catalogue Baby is one woman’s story of tragedy and beating the odds, and a resource for all women and couples who are trying to conceive.
MYRIAM STEINBERG is currently a writer. In her past life, she was a visual artist, and event organizer. For 11 years, she ran the In the House Festival, which brought live performances into people’s living rooms and backyards in Vancouver. Myriam was nominated for the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her work on the festival.
CHRISTACHE is an illustrator, writer, actor and youth instructor in BC.
LANI BRUNN is a photographer, social planner, bicycle commuter and avid recycler in Vancouver.