Stir Cheat Sheet: 4 events where the arts leap off the page at the Jewish Book Festival

Online talks feature writers who explore subjects from painting-inspired poetry to theatre as a political act

By Janet Smith

The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival runs online from February 6 to 10

ARTS AND CULTURE reads abound at this year’s Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, which has moved entirely online.

Book subjects range from painting-inspired poetry to disability arts and theatre as a political act. Here are four of the best books for the culturally inclined, all featured in virtual author talks in the coming days.

#1

Garden of Words

Pnina Granirer, February 9 at 1 pm

Vancouver painter Pnina Granirer launches her new book, five chapters of poems, some resembling Haikus, all inspired by her vibrant and surreal paintings. Through poetry, Granirer reflects on her incredible life—from her childhood in Romania during the Second World War, then Israel and to Canada’s West Coast—as well as on mortality, and on the healing power of the natural world that so often appears in her work. As the artist herself puts it, she wished “to plant a garden in my field of colours”.

#2

Leonora in the Morning Light

Michaela Carter, February 9 at 8 pm

Arizona-based author, painter, and poet Michaela Carter reimagines one of history’s most famous and tumultuous artist love stories. In 1937, British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter Leonora Carrington meets the married Max Ernst and follows him to Paris, where a cultural explosion is happening. But war threatens to drive them apart. Carter is on the same roster as Meg Waite Layton and her similarly set The Postmistress of Paris for a conversation called Art and War.

#3

Golem Girl: A Memoir

Riva Lehrer, February 7 at 4 pm

In a talk called Art Celebrating JDAIM (Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month), author Riva Lehrer discusses her illustrated memoir, and her life as an artist born with disabilities into a world determined to “fix” her. It’s only later in her life that she finds freedom through the burgeoning disability-arts movement. The book is packed with Lehrer’s vivid portraiture. Leomore Cohen leads the conversation.

#4

A Play for the End of the World

Jai Chakrabarti, February 6 at 7 pm

In his debut novel, Chakrabarti follows a man’s quest to stage a play he performed in as a child in wartime Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. It moves between 1970s New York City and government protests in India, and explores the way art can honour the past and present. Chakrabarti appears online here in conversation with author Gary Barwin in a talk called Mythical Quests; Helen Pinsky hosts.

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