Literary Modiin - May 2022 Author Event

More about the authors:

RACHEL’S second novel is ATOMIC ANNA. Her debut, A BEND IN THE STARS was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. It was also a Boston Globe Bestseller.

Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer and her work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, the Tel Aviv Review of Books and DeadDarlings. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. She is also the founder of Debut Spotlight and the Debut Editor at A Mighty Blaze. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business and Literature and Philosophy. She lives in Brookline, MA.

Haviva Ner-David is an ordained rabbi and interfaith-interspiritual minister, with a doctorate in philosophy and an M.F.A in Creative Writing. She runs Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body and Soul, where she officiates ritual immersion ceremonies and offers group workshops. A certified spiritual director with a specialty in dreamwork, she works with individuals and couples. Rabbi Ner-David is the author of two published spiritual journey memoirs (Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Towards Traditional Rabbinic Ordination; and Chanah's Voice: A Rabbi Wrestles with Gender, Commandment and the Women's Rituals of Baking, Bathing and Brightening) and her third, DREAMING AGAINT THE CURRENT: A RABBI'S SOUL JOURNEY, was published in December 2021. She is also the author of a soon-to-be-published guidebook for engaged couples, Getting (and Staying) Married Jewishly: Preparing for Your Life Together with Ancient and Modern Wisdom. Hope Valley is her debut novel. Rabbi Ner-David is involved in peace work, promoting a shared society of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Galilee, where she lives with Jacob, her life partner of thirty years, their seven children and their dog and cat. She also lives with a genetic degenerative muscular disease called FSHD, which has been one of her greatest teachers.

Elan Barnehama’s second novel, ESCAPE ROUTE, Running Wild Press, May 2022, is set in NYC during the late 1960s. His writing has appeared in Rough Cut Press, Red Fez, Boston Accent, Jewish Fiction, Drunk Monkeys, Writer’s Digest, HuffPost, the New York Journal of Books, public radio, and elsewhere. At different times he has taught writing and literature, was the fiction editor at Forth Magazine LA, worked with at-risk youth, was a ghostwriter for a university president, coached high school varsity baseball, had a gig as a radio news guy, and did a mediocre job as a short-order cook. He is a New Yorker by geography and a Mets fan by default.