Presenting The Charlotte Jewish Book Festival!
Join us as we engage with best-selling authors in a celebration of Jewish authors, books, and ideas.
To register for all the events, check out our Book Festival Package.
For a detailed description of each event please scroll down.
March 25 | 4pm
In Person
Alan Silberberg - Meet the Hamantaschen
and Meet the Matzah
Sponsored by
THURSDAY | MARCH 16 | 7 PM | VIRTUAL PREVIEW EVENT
MEG WAITE CLAYTON: The Postmistress of Paris
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Train to London revisits the dark early days of the German occupation in France in this haunting novel—a love story and a tale of high-stakes danger and incomparable courage—about a young American heiress who helps artists hunted by the Nazis escape from war-torn Europe.
SUNDAY | MARCH 19 | 7 PM
TICKETS $10
DARA HORN: People Love Dead Jews
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.
TUESDAY | MARCH 21 | 7 PM
TICKETS $10
RON BALSON: An Affair of Spies
ABOUT THE BOOK:
RONALD H. BALSON is an attorney, professor, and writer. His novel The Girl From Berlin won the National Jewish Book Award and was the Illinois Reading Council's adult fiction selection for their Illinois Reads program. He is also the author of Defending Britta Stein, Eli’s Promise, Karolina's Twins, The Trust, Saving Sophie, and the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers.
THURSDAY | MARCH 23 | 7 PM
TICKETS $10
LYNDA COHEN LOIGMAN: The Matchmaker’s Gift
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Is finding true love a calling or a curse?
Even as a child in 1910, Sara Glikman knows her gift: she is a maker of matches and a seeker of soulmates. But among the pushcart-crowded streets of New York’s Lower East Side, Sara’s vocation is dominated by devout older men—men who see a talented female matchmaker as a dangerous threat to their traditions and livelihood. After making matches in secret for more than a decade, Sara must fight to take her rightful place among her peers, and to demand the recognition she deserves.
SATURDAY | MARCH 25 | 4 PM
FREE PJ LIBRARY FAMILY PROGRAM
REGISTRATION REQUIRED
ALAN SILBERBERG: Meet the Hamantaschen, Meet the Matzah
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Meet the Hamantaschen:
You’ve met the latkes, you’ve met the matzah…now it’s time to meet the hamantaschen in this zany Purim story!
Somebody has stolen the Purim megillah and it’s up to three delicious detectives to figure it out! The Purim Party is in full swing, and the Purim play is ready to start – but without the megillah – there is no spiel.
Meet the Matzah:
From the creator of Meet the Latkes comes the zaniest retelling of the Passover story starring an earnest matzah and his bready friends!
Alfie Koman likes to hide. He is all set to tell his class the Passover story when the big bully, Loaf takes over. In Loaf’s version, the tyrant enslaving the Hebrews is not the Pharoah… but the PHA-ROACH, a giant evil cockroach. As Loaf ’s story gets more and more wild it’s up to Alfie to stop hiding and tell everyone the real Passover story
SUNDAY | MARCH 26 | 1 PM
SHAUNNA EDWARDS AND ALYSON RICHMAN: The Thread Collectors
ABOUT THE BOOK:
1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.
Meanwhile, in New York City, a Jewish woman stitches a quilt for her husband, who is stationed in Louisiana with the Union Army. Between abolitionist meetings, Lily rolls bandages and crafts quilts with her sewing circle for other soldiers, too, hoping for their safe return home. But when months go by without word from her husband, Lily resolves to make the perilous journey South to search for him.
As these two women risk everything for love and freedom during the brutal Civil War, their paths converge in New Orleans, where an unexpected encounter leads them to discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save us. Loosely inspired by the authors' family histories, this stunning novel will stay with readers for a long time.
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