Started in 1999, and organized by writer Willa Schneberg, this annual event features readings by prominent Oregon Jewish poets and writers. The writers in the 2020 program, who span a range of genres including fiction, poetry, non-fiction and essays, will share selections from their work in a virtual reading on Zoom.
Jacob Boas (Ph.D.) was born in Transit Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands and has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1996. He is the author of Boulevard des Misères: The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork (Archon Books, 1985); We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (Holt/MacMillan,1995); Writers’ Block: The Paris Antifascist Congress of 1935 (Legenda, 2016), and Cultural Criticism in the Netherlands, 1933-1940: The Newspaper Columns of Menno ter Braak (Brill, 2020). Boas has taught history at Portland Community College and Linfield College in McMinnville.
Sherri Levine is a poet, artist, and teacher living in Portland, Oregon. She is a recipient of the Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize and was awarded Poet’s First Prize (Poet’s Choice) from the Oregon Poetry Association in 2017. Her poetry and other writings have appeared in literary magazines, including CALYX, The Timberline Review, Poet Lore, The Jewish Literary Journal, and Mizmor Anthology. She founded and hosts “Head for the Hills”—a monthly poetry series and open mic located at the Hillsdale library, now on Zoom. Her first book, In These Voices, was published in 2018 by Poetry Box.
Willa Schneberg is a poet, essayist, visual artist, curator and psychotherapist in private practice. She has authored five poetry collections including: In The Margins of The World, recipient of the Oregon Book Award, and her latest volume, Rending the Garment. Willa co-founded with OJMCHE’s director, Judy Margles, Oregon “Jewish Voices,” now in its 21th year, and guided a Literary Arts Readers’ seminar entitled “Literature of Modern and Contemporary Jewish American Women Writers.” Her just completed poetry manuscript, “The Naked Room” is looking for a publisher.
Betsy Fogelman Tighe has published poetry in literary magazines, including TriQuarterly, which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and in Rattle, for which she traveled to LA to read. Her full-length manuscript was a semi-finalist for the Snake Nation Press Violet Reed Haas Poetry Prize and the Hidden Rivers Willow Run Book Award. Tighe’s essay about her mentorship with James Wright appears in the spring, 2018 issue of The Georgia Review. Ilya Kaminsky chose a poem as a finalist for the 2020 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. She is the teacher-librarian at Roosevelt HS, and has raised two fine young adults.
Leslie What is a Nebula Award-winning writer and Oregon Book Award finalist in fiction, whose work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including, Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust, Best New Horror, Lilith, Parabola, Fugue, Midstream, Asimov’s, The Los Angeles Review, Unstuck and Calyx. Her mother was a survivor of the Riga Ghetto.
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