Literary Modiin - July 2022 Author Event

Ariela Freedman was born in Brooklyn and has lived in Jerusalem, New York, Calgary, London, and Montreal. She has a Ph.D. from New York University and teaches literature at Concordia University's Liberal Arts College in Montreal. Her debut, Arabic for Beginners (LLP, 2017), was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize and won the 2018 J. I. Segal Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, A Joy to be Hidden (LLP, 2019), was shortlisted for the Segal Prize in 2020, and was a finalist for the The Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Léa (LLP, 2022), based on the life of famed activist Léa Roback, is her latest novel.

Maria Espinosa is a novelist, poet, and translator as well as a teacher. Her publications include five novels: Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, Dark Plums, Longing, which received an American Book Award,  as well as Dying Unfinished, which received a Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence from PEN Oakland. Her fifth and most recent novel, Suburban Souls, tells a tale of Jewish German Holocaust survivors in 1970’s San Francisco.  She has also published two collections of poems, Love Feelings, and Night Music, and a critically acclaimed translation of George Sand’s novel, Lelia. Espinosa is concerned with human communication on a level that transcends the norms permitted by society. Her novels focus on the subtle as well as the obvious forces that shape a human being.

Moshe Mikanovsky is a Software Engineer and Product Management Leader who turns his creativity towards building software products, hosting a podcast, creating visual art, and writing. Moshe participates in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and, in 2013, began writing his first novel The Resurrector. Since then, Moshe has studied creative writing at the University of Toronto, honing the technical aspects of novel writing and revisions. In addition to his love for the written word, Moshe loves mentoring and coaching product managers and startup founders; helping them to realize their entrepreneurial dreams. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Toronto.