Today, I'm so pleased to welcome fellow Canadian Karen Schauber to gilagreenwrites. If I would have known Karen one year ago, I would definitely have met up with her last year in Vancouver to talk flash fiction, something I taught online for a decade.  As it turns out, I met her virtually only after my trip to participate in&nbs...

Looking for a roundup of what's in store for 2021 in these categories? New traditional publishing imprints (Big Five) Beyond the Big FiveChildren's and YAComics and graphic novelsNew publishersNew literary agencies and agentsNew agenciesNew agentsDigital media ventures If the answer is yes, this is the article worth reading and filing for refe...

 The Poetic Justice of Grief "You're already writing about your mother?" "It took me years to be able to write about my father." "Don't you need time to grieve?" "Wasn't it incredibly difficult to write about your parents so soon after they died?" These are the kinds of comments I received from people who couldn't believe I picked up my pen im...

Please welcome author Dr. Suzie Lowinger to gilagreenwrites. I'm delighted to have a former class participant as part of my site and I'm always happy to promote more English-speaking writers in Israel. Suzie shares her insights into character and character development and how our own creations can not only surprise us, but have something to teach u...

The two faces of autofiction

Since July 2020, I've been teaching autofiction online (and now on zoom) and I've already received enough feedback to share with you not only my number one question, but the number one stumbling block at the beginning of each class. So at the risk of sounding redundant (yes, I answered this question back in June, but that was pre-teaching...

I'm thrilled to repost NPR's Hanukkah Lights Stories of the Season for your perusal and enjoyment.   From their website: "Hanukkah is a time to share light, miracles and faith. It's been a difficult year and these stories will reflect that. They're darker than usual. But we hope the miracle of Hanukkah casts its light through these storie...

It is my pleasure to repost this month's Jewish Book Carnival from The Rachack Review and I'm so happy to have spent time with author Leah Kirshenberg who is a children's author, an educator, as well as an author of several educational books about language acquisition.    The Rachack Review is proud to serve as the December 2020 host...

 I'm delighted to share my Hanukkah podcast with you. It was, as usual, an honor to chat with Dave Pezza from NovelClass. We shmooze about the holidays, my Hanukkah-themed very short story "Roller Coaster"  from my White Zion novel-in-stories (Cervena Barva Press, 2019). We get into parenting teenagers, what Hanuk...

I am delighted to share with you my recent podcast with Galit Gottlieb on the New Books Network. Galit is the Chicago-based author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery series and a host for New Books in Literature, a podcast of the New Books Network.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to discuss my work with such a wonderful reader and lis...

I am so pleased to have been invited by Harif  to speak with talented author Ayelet Tsabari, (The Art of Leaving). I am a fan of Ayelet's work and honored to be in conversation with her to kick off 2021. Our talk will be moderated by author Lyn Julius, co-founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and Nort...

Register here. 

I'm so excited to be part of the first Hannukkah Podcast with NovelClass's Dave Pezza. Join us on Tuesday December 8. Time TBA.   We will be discussing short Hannukkah Jewish Fiction including my own Flash piece "Roller Coaster" published in Jewish Fiction. This is the third time I'll be podcasting with Dave and I'm so thrilled to be join...

 I'm so excited to be part of New Works Wednesdays. Join me 27 January 2021 to discuss White Zion.  Register here. I'm happy to answer any questions in advance. Thank you to the Institute of Jewish Experience for the invitation. 

Thank you G.P. Gottlieb of the New Books Network for inviting me to join your podcast on December 2 at noon (CST) or 8 p.m. Israel time. We'll be discussing my young adult, environmental novel No Entry that takes place in South Africa's Kruger National Park and my novel-in-stories White Zion that spans Yemen, Israel, and Canada. I'll...

Let's expand the canon of Jewish literature together. There are so many untold Jewish stories. Don't let yours be one of them. Join me January 5 at noon (EST) for a five-part autofiction workshop for women and men at all writing levels with a Sephardi/Mizrachi background or a Sephardi/Mizrachi story to tell.  Space is ...

I'm delighted to be part of the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) Institute of Jewish Experience's "New Work Series."   I'll be talking about the origins of my novel-in-stories White Zion (Cervena Barva, 2019).  DATE: January 27,2021 TIME: NOON (EST) I'll post the link when it's available.  From the (ASF) Institute of Jewish Ex...

Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden on Unsplash

Thank you to Susan Weintrob, the creator of the "expand the table" website, for her recent review of my young adult eco-novel No Entry (Stormbird Press, 2019). On her food and literature site, Susan pairs her review of my novel with a delicious recipe for a popular South African breakfast: pumpkin pancakes.  From her site:  "Pumpkin ...

Don't miss new posts by these talented authors and creatives coming up in December, February, March and April: Karen Schauber, Melanie Conroy-Goldman, Leslea Newman, Sharon Kirsch, and Ann Lambert.  Photo by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash

November Jewish Carnival

Welcome to the November Jewish Book Carnival! We're a month away from our next Jewish Festival of Lights (yes, I'm already waiting for Hanukkah), but we still have this month's Jewish Book Carnival to look forward to and to help us spread more inspiration and brightness. This month is packed with something for everyone from new poetry at Life ...

Sign-up is open! Start 2021 with the story you've always wanted to tell.  Tell Your Sephardi-Mizrahi Story Have you always wanted to write your life story? My new Middle Eastern-flavored Autofiction Workshop explores a writing form that pushes beyond memoir and borrows fiction techniques. Inventing your own dialogue and creating deta...

I'm so thrilled to have author Liza Wiemer visit at gilagreenwrites. With all of the difficulties of the current pandemic, it has given me the opportunity to meet so many wonderful writers from all over the world as more people reach out than ever before. Today Liza shares a valuable tip for writers at any stage of manuscript develop...

Thank you to The Sami Rohr Prize Guest Forum for hosting the October Jewish Book Carnival! The Sami Rohr Prize Guest Forum is delighted to host the October 2020 Jewish Book Carnival. This monthly event, organized by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL), allows those of us who cover the world of Jewish books online to "meet, read, and comment o...

by Susie Berg It is both a blessing and a curse of being a writer that most of us are also readers. The blessing is pretty clear: books! Covid lockdown? Bring on the "to be read" pile. Put every book I ever wanted to read on hold as an e-book at the library. Buy books to support independent booksellers and authors whose voices shout with both anger...

As I've shared with you before, this summer I taught my first zoom autofiction course. This meant I spent a couple of months perusing everything I could find about autofiction and I'm sure I barely scratched the surface. I loved the course and it was so much fun for all of us, several participants requested a part two.  As such, I'm still look...

Back in March 2020, I had the privilege of participating in an SCBWI webinar with amazing authors Rajani LaRocca and Erica S. Perl.   Naturally, I could not let such an opportunity go to waste and immediately invited both Erica and Rajani to gilagreenwrites. Both readily agreed and generously shared their time, but Rajani h...

In 2013, I published a short story titled Mother, Daughter, Mercenary in an international crime fiction magazine titled Noir Nation.  I always wanted to go back to that story and I expanded on it in another short story titled Cutty Sark, published in 2018 in Writer's Bone in their December issue. Though at first glance these two...

 In the last two weeks, we at NLA have offered representation to seven authors, most of whom received multiple offers. All agents are aggressively seeking new talent right now! It's awesome to talk to savvy authors who have a list of good questions prepared for their initial conversations with prospective agents, questions like:

I loved this July 28th article by Kate Reed Petty on Electric Literature and I agree, it's time to rethink how authors interact with readers online.  Before the stay-at-home orders came down in Baltimore, the last thing I did in person was participate in a panel conversation about—ironically—"art and the apocalypse." In retrospect, we should h...

Please welcome author Meryl Ain to gilagreenwrites. Today Meryl discusses the title of her new novel and the layers of meaning she continues to discover behind it.  By Meryl Ain One of the most frequently recurring questions I'm asked about my debut novel is: "What is the meaning of the title, The Takeaway Men, and why did you choose it?" No, ...