The Reading Live Review- March 2023-

Column One

1. Ibram X Kendi- USA- first appearance on The Reading Life-DR. IBRAM X. KENDI is a National Book Award-winning author of thirteen books for adults and children, including nine New York Times bestsellers—five of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. 

2. Yevgana Beloruset- Ukraine-first appearance-Yevgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian artist, writer, and photographer born in Kyiv in 1980. In her works, she calls attention to the most vulnerable sections of Ukrainian society.

Yevgenia is co-founder of the journal Prostory, member of the interdisciplinary curatorial collective Hudrada, author of the photo series Victories of the Defeated and books Lucky Breaks (International Literature Award by Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2020), Series of Lectures on the Modern Life of Animals and Anfang des Krieges (Horst Bingel Prize for Literature 2022). Twice her work was presented in the Ukrainian program at the Venice Biennale — in 2015 with Victories of the Defeated and in 2022 with A Wartime Diary. 

3. Margaret Atwood- Canada- featured numerous times

Column Two 

1. Kanoko Okamoto- Japan-first appearance-Kanoko Okamoto was born on March 1, 1889, in the Akasaka district of Tokyo, now Minato-ku. Both her father, who had been a purveyor to the Tokugawa shogunate, and her mother, descended from a famous old family of Kanagawa Prefecture and skilled in the ballad drama known as tokiwazu, were persons of artistic . Her major work is the long novel Shojoruten (The Vicissitudes of Life). On January 31, 1939, on a trip to the Ginza with a young friend, Kanoko Okamoto was stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage as she got off the bus. She died eighteen days later

2. Mendel Mann - Poland - Russia - Paris -first appearance-MANN, MENDEL (Mendl Man ; 1916–1975), Yiddish novelist and painter. Mann was born in Płonsk, Poland. He died in Paris.When his art education in Warsaw was interrupted by the Nazi invasion, he fled eastwards and enlisted in the Red Army, in which he witnessed the siege of Moscow and the occupation of Berlin. After the war he settled in Łodz and published a volume of verse, Di Shtilkayt Mont ("Silence Calls," 1945). Following the Kielce pogrom, he moved to Regensburg in 1946, where he edited a Yiddish dp newspaper. He immigrated to Israel in 1948, where he published Oyfgevakhte Erd ("Awakened Earth," 1953), a collection of stories reflecting the lives of Jewish refugees living in a former Palestinian village. From 1949 he was a co-editor of Di Goldene Keyt. The novel, In a Farvorloztn Dorf ("In an Abandoned Village," 1954), is based on the life of Zionist emigrants to Palestine from Jewish villages in the vicinity of Płonsk. His most outstanding work is a trilogy of novels reflecting his wartime experiences.

3. Oren Schneider- USA- first appearance- author of THE APPRENTICE OF BUCHENWALD THE TRUE STORY OF THE TEENAGE BOY WHO SABOTAGED HITLER’S WAR MACHINE by Oren Schneider- 2023 -destined to be a classic

Column Three

1. Theodora Goss-Hungary to USA- first appearance-Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States, where she completed a PhD in English literature. She is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting (2006), Songs for Ophelia (2014), and Snow White Learns Witchcraft (2019), as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), and sequels European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018) and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (2019). She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.

2. Kenzaburo Òe- Japan- Nobel Laureate

3. Nikole Hannah-Jones- USA-first appearance- Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University where she is the founding director of the Center for Journalism & Democracy. 

Her reporting has earned her the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, the Knight Award for Public Service, the Peabody Award, two George Polk awards and the National Magazine Award three times. She is a Society of American Historians Fellow and a member of the Academy of Arts 

Column Four

1. Erin Litteken- USA- first appearance-Erin Litteken is a debut novelist with a degree in history and a passion for research. At a young age, she was enthralled by stories of her family’s harrowing experiences in Ukraine before, during and after World War II. Her first historical fiction title, The Memory Keeper of Kyiv, draws on those experiences. She lives in Illinois, USA with her husband and children. From the author's website: https://www.erinlitteken.com.- I hope to read more of her work soon

2. Issac Bashevis Singer- Poland to USA-Nobel Laureate- Yiddish author- I hope to read many more of his works

3. Yu Miri- Japan- first appearance- YU MIRI is a writer of plays, prose fiction, and essays, with over twenty books to her name. She received Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, she began to visit the affected area, hosting a radio show to listen to survivors’ stories. She relocated to Fukushima in 2015 and has opened a bookstore and theater space to continue her cultural work in collaboration with those affected by the disaster. 

4. Daniel Mendelsohn-USA-first appearance-Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia and Princeton. After completing his Ph.D. he moved to New York City, where he began freelance writing full time; since 1991 he has been a prolific contributor of essays, reviews, and articles to many publications, most frequently The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. He has also been a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and New York magazine, where he was the weekly book critic. In February 2019, he was named Editor-at-Large of the New York Review of Books and the Director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a charitable trust that supports writers of nonfiction, essay, and criticism.

Birth Countries of March Authors

1. USA-5

2. Japan -3

3. Poland-2

4. Canada-1

5. Hungry-1

6. Ukraine-1

Four of the 13 authors are deceased, two are Nobel Laureates, 7 appeared for the first time, 7 are women.

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