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If this is supposed to be an era of austerity, Stephanie Singer never got the memo. For BookFest 2012, the manager of special programs at the JCC of San Francisco decided to go all out.

BookFest is the center’s annual celebration of Jewish books. Now in its seventh year, the festival routinely draws top authors for readings and panels. For this year’s event, which runs from Feb. 23 to 28, Singer wanted more.

In addition to major writers, she’s lined up multiple panel discussions, film screenings, theater presentations, a Shabbat dinner (with recipes culled from popular Jewish cookbooks) and a large-scale art display: sculptures made from books.

“It was a little bit out of boredom,” Singer says, describing the impetus to enlarge BookFest’s scope. “We wanted to see what we could do differently and change the model. We brought together an amazing team to see how we could blow it up.

Source: Jweekly.com

by thefastfinger

The Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards aims to bring awareness to the Jewish Canadian canon and to promote and give support to the Canadian writers. The awards have been presented yearly since 1988, celebrating excellence in Canadian writing on Jewish themes and subjects.

The winners will be announced in May 2012. The awards will be given on June 7, 2012 at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library as the culminating event of the Toronto Jewish Book Festival.

The 2012 awards jury are Barbara Berson, Adam Fuerstenberg, Marjorie Gann, Judi Ghert, Sara R. Horowitz, Carla Lancit, Michael Posner, Judy Stoffman, Edward Trapunski, Alain Goldschlager.

Source: The Fast Fingers » Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book ...

by Staff

Deluxe Edition: 17th annual Jewish Book Fair packed with speakers and special events

By Susan DeMaggio

It’s 11 days of hard-hitting topics and lighthearted musings, presented by folks so stoked about them that they’ve written books on the subjects and are arriving by the planeful to share their thoughts and observations.

The authors are coming! The authors are coming!

And they will be here as guests of the 17th annual San Diego Jewish Book Fair comprised of Morning Coffee Conversations, Talks Over Lunch, and Evening Lectures, Nov. 3-13, mainly at the Jewish Community Center in La Jolla.

The authors are prime ministers’ sons, historians, novelists, baseball players, psychiatrists, journalists, broadcasters, musicians, chefs, rabbis, comedians and ADHD survivors. Their topics run the gamut from “The Rise of the Israel-Islamic Conflict” to “How We Age” to “The Secret Lives of Wives.” Real page-turners.

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