The Diary Beyond Anne Frank: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Nina Sie­gal and Yael van der Wouden by Bec­ca Kantor

Yael van der Wouden’s debut nov­el, The Safe­keep—win­ner of a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award and the Women’s Prize — focus­es on a rela­tion­ship between two Dutch women in the 1960s that is pro­found­ly changed by the dis­cov­ery of a wartime diary. In this con­ver­sa­tion with Nina Sie­gal (The Diary Keep­ers), van der Wouden dis­cuss­es how fic­tion can revi­tal­ize queer Jew­ish sto­ries that have been erased from the past, and how those sto­ries seep into the present day.

Read more in vol­ume 8.

Into the Mud by Yael van der Wouden

If you’re crav­ing more writ­ing by van der Wouden, look no fur­ther than this short sto­ry in which, she says, ​“you can see me work­ing out dynam­ics and themes that become cen­tral in The Safe­keep.” ​“Into the Mud” invites us to what could be a Euro­pean town in the ​’90s – except that here, there are dyb­buks who hide in microwaves, a rab­bi warns his con­gre­ga­tion ​“about the wicked­ness of the man who wants to con­trol anoth­er being,” and Miryam, Debby’s some­times-best-friend, takes out her frus­tra­tion with her dys­func­tion­al par­ents by mak­ing golems down by an aban­doned lake. Deb­by is in awe of charis­mat­ic, rebel­lious Miryam, who casu­al­ly taunts her at school but con­de­scends to spend time with her over the sum­mer. The fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments of this sto­ry pro­vide a back­drop for nuanced, sus­pense­ful ren­der­ing of a friend­ship defined in equal parts by resent­ment and attraction. 

Read more in vol­ume 5.

Still Life of My Apart­ment on a Win­ter Morn­ing by Rey­zl Grace

This poem more than earns its title — it’s as fine­ly wrought and visu­al­ly evoca­tive as a paint­ing. With allu­sions to every­thing from klezmer music and the White Rose resis­tance group, to the author of Bam­bi and the ani­ma­tor of 101 Dal­ma­tians, ​“Still Life of My Apart­ment on a Win­ter Morn­ing” is a lit­er­ary ode to a queer cou­ple and the sto­ries that have brought them togeth­er. The nar­ra­tor won­ders at a love so attuned to and appre­cia­tive of the speci­fici­ties of their iden­ti­ty and inter­ests, even when they con­tra­dict one anoth­er. In that sense, the title also becomes a ref­er­ence to the life the cou­ple can lead with­in the safe­guard of their home — still, steady, con­sis­tent, accept­ing — no mat­ter what the out­side world might hold.

Read more in vol­ume 8.

Holo­grams by Adam Schorin

“We were wait­ing in line at the Holo­caust Muse­um on Prinzen­strasse when I real­ized I had to pee,” is the unfor­get­table first line of Adam Schorin’s ​“Holo­grams.” Our nar­ra­tor is Sam­my, a young and aim­less Jew­ish Amer­i­can expat who lives in Berlin. While vis­it­ing an exhib­it of holo­grams of Holo­caust sur­vivors with his fel­low drag per­form­ers, Sam­my comes face-to-face with his fam­i­ly’s past and the real­i­ty of his tran­sient life. This mul­ti­lay­ered sto­ry, laced with dark humor, deft­ly explores the fine lines between Holo­caust edu­ca­tion and spec­ta­cle, the revered and the mun­dane, drag and tran­sex­u­al­i­ty, and priv­i­lege and prej­u­dice in Ger­many today.

Read more in vol­ume 7. 

Dou­ble Muse by Anto­nia Angress and Emma Cop­ley Eisenberg

In their debut nov­els, Anto­nia Angress and Emma Cop­ley Eisen­berg explore rela­tion­ships between queer artists on the cusp of adult­hood and their careers. In Angress’s Sirens & Mus­es, Louisa, a trans­fer stu­dent to Wrynn Col­lege of Art, is drawn to her aloof, tal­ent­ed room­mate, Kari­na. In Cop­ley Eisenberg’s House­mates, grad­u­ate stu­dent Leah is sim­i­lar­ly attract­ed to and inspired by Bernie, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has recent­ly moved into the West Philadel­phia house Leah rents with friends.

In ​“Unteth­er­ing the Muse from the Male Gaze,” Angress dis­cusses how her book sub­verts tra­di­tion­al ideas about the artis­tic process, and the Jew­ish his­to­ry that under­pins her book’s themes. Cop­ley Eisen­berg responds in an essay, ​“Artists, Mus­es — Equals?”, which exam­ines her book’s take on the artist – muse relationship.

Read more in vol­ume 8.

Sovi­et Sto­ries: Grap­pling with a Lega­cy of Trau­ma Through Fic­tion by Katya Apekina and Ruth Madievsky

Anoth­er Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award win­ner, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Phar­ma­cy, is nar­rat­ed by a young, bisex­u­al woman try­ing to make sense of her life in the wake of her old­er sister’s dis­ap­pear­ance, the emo­tion­al toll that pogroms and the Holo­caust have tak­en on her rel­a­tives, and the allure of a beau­ti­ful and seem­ing­ly unflap­pable self-pro­claimed psy­chic. In ​“No One Dis­ap­pears With­out a Trace” (paired with an essay by Katya Apekina (Moth­er Doll) in ​“Sovi­et Sto­ries”), Madievsky delves into her own rel­a­tives’ expe­ri­ences as Jews in in the Sovi­et Union, and how their trau­ma-informed dark humor per­me­ates her novel.

Read more in vol­ume 8.

‘To Cel­e­brate Non­con­for­mi­ty’: A Con­ver­sa­tion with David Adj­mi and Jack Haz­an by Michael Harari

“Look at us: three gay, Amer­i­can Syr­i­an Jews chat­ting togeth­er about our books,” Michael Harari begins this wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Jack Haz­an and David Adj­mi. Togeth­er, the writ­ers dis­cuss the tra­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties in which they grew up, their expe­ri­ences com­ing of age, and how they found their life­lines through cre­ativ­i­ty — Adj­mi as a play­wright and the author of the mem­oir Lot Six; Haz­an as a ther­a­pist, bak­er, and the author of Mind Over Bat­ter; and Harari as a cre­ative direc­tor and Jack Hazan’s coauthor.

Read more in vol­ume 7. 

‘The Secret Was Me’: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Dani Shapiro and T Kira Mad­den by Bec­ca Kantor

As chil­dren, writ­ers Dani Shapiro and T Kira Mad­den nav­i­gat­ed dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships with their par­ents and felt out of place in their com­mu­ni­ties. Both lost their fathers while still in their ear­ly twen­ties. And for both, a DNA test led to life-chang­ing rev­e­la­tions. In this con­ver­sa­tion about their respec­tive mem­oirs, the two dis­cuss how their per­son­al expe­ri­ences led them to probe larg­er ques­tions about iden­ti­ty. Mad­den notes that her life as well as her book, Long Live the Tribe of Father­less Girls, resist cat­e­go­riza­tion. ​“I’m Jew­ish. And Chi­nese Hawai­ian. And gay. I’m all of these things.”

Read more in vol­ume 4. 

Poland Itin­er­ary, Class 3B by Lee­or Ohayon

This sto­ry fol­lows a British Moroc­can teenag­er, Daniel Amar, on a school trip to Poland. Daniel is bul­lied because he is Mizrahi and his fam­i­ly wasn’t direct­ly impact­ed by the Holo­caust — in the eyes of his teach­ers and most of his peers, this makes him less of a Jew than they are. Daniel also nurs­es an unre­quit­ed crush on his pop­u­lar class­mate Josh, and his feel­ings come to embody his wari­ness of Ashke­nazi cul­ture as well as his desire to be accept­ed into it. 

Lee­or Ohay­on gives us an inci­sive look at how Ashkenor­ma­tive retellings of his­to­ry can exclude oth­ers when they place the Holo­caust at the cen­ter of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. By struc­tur­ing the nar­ra­tive as an itin­er­ary, he empha­sizes the expec­ta­tions under­pin­ning the remem­brance trip — whether they are about eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, or sexuality.

Read more in vol­ume 6.

‘A Might-Have-Been Uni­verse’: A Con­ver­sa­tion with André Aci­man by Rus­sell Janzen

In this inter­view, André Aci­man reflects on his icon­ic 2007 nov­el, Call Me By Your Name, and dis­cuss­es his deci­sion to return to his pro­tag­o­nists in his 2019 nov­el, Find Me. In fact, the theme of return runs through­out this con­ver­sa­tion; it applies to Aciman’s writ­ing style, the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Jew­ish his­to­ry, and to Oliv­er and Elio’s rela­tion­ship. Aci­man says that although the two char­ac­ters are ​“drift­ing through life,” some­times in oppo­site direc­tions, their con­nec­tion is ​“a point of anchor­age that they will seek out again.”

Read more in vol­ume 4. 

Strug­gling Our Way Toward Col­lec­tive Nar­ra­tion by Sam Cohen

“There is both plea­sure and dif­fi­cul­ty in latch­ing myself to a we,” Sam Cohen observes in this essay, which delves into the way that nar­ra­tive voice can shape our under­stand­ing of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. At Passover, Cohen strug­gles to rec­on­cile her father’s tra­di­tion­al obser­vance with her own under­stand­ing of the hol­i­day as a queer, non-reli­gious per­son. Ulti­mate­ly, the first-per­son plur­al of the seder offers a ​“kind of mag­ic” — a way for every­one at her table to tran­scend their dif­fer­ences and cohese into a ​“mot­ley collective.”

Read more in vol­ume 6. 

Bod­ies, Bor­ders, and Desire by Ranen Omer-Sher­­man

This arti­cle by Ranen Omer-Sher­man exam­ines three nov­els about rela­tion­ships between queer Mus­lims and Jews: Moriel Roth­man-Zech­er’s Sad­ness Is a White Bird, Moshe Sakal’s The Dia­mond Set­ter, and Evan Fal­l­en­berg’s The Part­ing Gift. Each of these books is ele­gant­ly craft­ed and rich with psy­cho­log­i­cal insight. Togeth­er, they give a mul­ti-faceted por­trait of what Omer-Sher­man terms ​“the seduc­tive promise as well as the bit­ter lim­its of coex­is­tence between Jews and Arabs” in the Mid­dle East. 

Read more in vol­ume 3. 

Mor­tal­i­ty Faced You as a Ques­tion by Ilana Masad 

Writ­ten at the height of the Covid pan­dem­ic, this essay is a med­i­ta­tion on grief and mourn­ing. As Ilana Masad watch­es the num­ber of deaths spike, they strug­gle to com­pre­hend the sit­u­a­tion in any way besides the abstract. (“[H]ow can you, or any­one, begin to con­jure up the faces of 33,257 peo­ple?”) Masad touch­es on sex­u­al­i­ty when they form ​“a near­ly instan­ta­neous crush on” a fam­i­ly friend. The moment is brief, but it isn’t inci­den­tal. It’s a reminder that human instincts and emo­tions can exist even in mass crises.

Read more in vol­ume 4. 

The Lit­tle Bot­tles by Weaver 

Hin­da and Basya grow up as best friends in their shtetl, and then Hin­da invokes a piece of mag­ic that dra­mat­i­cal­ly splits their life tra­jec­to­ries. This sto­ry is imbued with the sat­is­fy­ing plot and indeli­ble imagery of a folk­tale. (After read­ing it, you won’t be able to drink from an uncov­ered glass with­out first check­ing to make sure there isn’t a tiny soul float­ing around in the water.) But ​“The Lit­tle Bot­tles” also depicts a bond between two women in a way that few old­er nar­ra­tives could have. 

Read more in vol­ume 4.

Queer­ing Gen­e­sis by Sarah Blake

Sarah Blake takes us back even fur­ther — to bib­li­cal times. Her debut nov­el, Naamah, is a retelling of the sto­ry of Noah’s Ark through the eyes of Noah’s wife. In this essay, she posits that Gen­e­sis inher­ent­ly lends itself to a queer read­ing. Reflect­ing on the dis­par­i­ty between the text and our con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ing of a ​“tra­di­tion­al” mar­riage, she points to men­tions of unions between human beings and fall­en angels that result in giants. ​“What isn’t pos­si­ble in an envi­ron­ment like this?” she asks.

Read more in vol­ume 4. 

‘We Are All Already Per­fect’: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Melis­sa Broder by Bec­ca Kantor

Wild and pro­found, Melis­sa Broder’s nov­el Milk Fed intro­duces us to Rachel: a woman in her mid-twen­ties with a judg­men­tal moth­er, a soul­less job at a Los Ange­les tal­ent agency, and a fix­a­tion on mon­i­tor­ing her calo­rie intake and remain­ing thin. At her therapist’s behest, Rachel makes a bulky clay fig­ure to rep­re­sent her worst fears for her body. The next day, the fig­ure seems to come to life in the form of Miri­am, a ​“zaftig” Ortho­dox woman who has start­ed to work at Rachel’s favorite frozen yogurt shop. Instead of being repulsed, Rachel feels unex­pect­ed­ly … lustful. 

In this con­ver­sa­tion, Broder dis­cuss­es the impos­si­bil­i­ty of sep­a­rat­ing the spir­i­tu­al and the phys­i­cal, the true mean­ing of per­fec­tion, and how she uses a ​“can­dy coat­ing of humor” to reveal her deep­est vulnerabilities.

Read more in vol­ume 5.

How to Have a Dis­agree­ment With­out Hav­ing a Fight by S. Bear Bergman, illus­trat­ed by Saul Freed­­man-Law­­son

On a clos­ing note: this month can be a dif­fi­cult time to talk to loved ones. I’m always inspired by S. Bear Bergman’s com­ic ​“How to Have a Dis­agree­ment With­out Hav­ing a Fight.” Bergman, an edu­ca­tor and trans activist, gives advice that is gen­tle, help­ful, and fun­ny. And Saul Freed­man-Law­son, who ​“likes to draw excit­ing­ly gen­dered peo­ple with big noses,” pro­vides dis­tinc­tive and gor­geous illustrations. 

Read more in vol­ume 6.