The 39th Annual JCC Jewish Book Festival Returns With A Diverse Lineup Of Events And Authors

The JCC Jewish Book Festival (Feb. 10-15, 2024) will bring community together in a warm embrace during challenging times with fascinating writers from across Canada, USA, Israel and England.

Our featured authors manifest the ideas pervading the tumultuous world around us, the effects of the rampant anti-Semitism and the conflicting attitudes towards Israel and the big questions stemming from the use of AI (artificial intelligence); they investigate racial and gender diversity in our communities around the world, honour a local hero, and explore multicultural connections. At the same time, music and dark humour are our steady companions, spicy reads will mark Valentine's Day and graphic novels, memoirs and cartoons will have a full day in the program!

Featured 2024 Festival authors will include: ​ Opening Night with the great Canadian biographer MICHAEL POSNER in conversation with Alan Twigg about his monumental biography Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories , whose three volumes constitute the most complete and nuanced portrait of his extraordinary life published to date. A special event honouring our local hero Rudolf Vrba with journalist and bestselling novelist JONATHAN FREEDLAND discussing his book The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World . Our annual Book Clubs event will feature bestselling Cuban/American author ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA with his novel Night Travelers , in which four generations of women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the Cuban Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The innovative Art and Artifical intelligence event will pair graphic novelist AMY KURZWEIL and her memoir Artificial , where 3 generations of Kurzweil creators preserve their history through unusual means, together with Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner SEAN MICHAELS whose new novel Do You Remember Being Born? takes readers on a lyrical joy ride with a formidable poet and her unusual new collaborator, a digital mind just one month old. Local luminaries YOSEF WOSK and ALAN TWIGG will discuss Naked in a Pyramid , essays revealing unexpected facets of Wosk's life and personality and bringing in another great essayist in GARY BARWIN's Imagining Imagining. Montreal's (and former Vancouverite) NORMAN RAVVIN will present Who Gets In: An Immigration Story, a deeply personal memoir revealing of immigration policies in the 1930s and RICHARD MENKIS will share his latest In a “Land of Hope”: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923 co-edited with PIERRE ANCTIL. On Valentine's Day, we're offering spicy novels from LGBTQ+ authors TAMARA FAITH BERGER and REBECCA “BEE” SACKS in conversation with the wonderful ANAKANA SCHOFIELD. In a similar vein, local author ROBERTA RICH will present her latest The Jazz Club Spy historical fiction novel and then interview US historian DEBBY APPLEGATE on her fascinating tour-de-force non-fiction book Madam: the Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age. Debut author RUTH RAKOFF's Untethered is the riveting story of unusual twin sisters raised by Holocaust survivor grandparents and their connection to Israel; we'll enjoy humour from coast to coast with local author JEFF GROBERMAN and PEI's STEVEN MAYOFF whose darkly satirical novel The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief is certainly worth discovering! For our Closing Night, we're thrilled to hear True Crime stories from Winnipeg's ALLAN LEVINE with his Details Are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder together with EMMY and Gemini Award-winning film maker DAVID RABINOVITCH with his Jukebox Empire: The Mob and the Dark Side of the American Dream. In the Feb 25 Epilogue, award-winning and much beloved Israeli author AYELET GUNDAR-GOSHEN will present her latest novel of racial tension and insidious anti-Semitism The Wolf Hunt, which fits somewhere between a novel of ideas, a thriller and a character study.

Local children's authors PAUL SHORE and DEBORAH KATZ HENRIQUEZ will present their graphic novel Steve and Eve Save the Planet that engages children in climate action through adventurous storytelling, while US author RICHARD HO will enlighten children with his Two New Years, featuring a multifaith family learning about the Chinese and the Jewish New Year.

“We are thrilled to reconnect with our audiences and share moving experiences around books and ideas, as they create such meaningful community gatherings! The nucleus of our festival is Jewish-themed, but our speakers, events and audience happily represent a diversity of cultures and lived experiences that defy narrow categorization. We bring forward universal themes and whether it's a written, illustrated or performed word, the Jewish Book Festival strives to encompass them all!” says Festival Director, Dana Camil Hewitt.

Mark your calendars now! Regular updates can be found on the website at www.jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival where our digital program guide will be available after December 28, 2023.