Monday evenings
6:45pm: Schmooze and Wine
7pm: Program
Join renowned authors on the Ansche Chesed roof as they read from and discuss their recent work, Monday nights from June 15 to July 27.
Enjoy summer evenings on our beautiful and breezy rooftop (or indoors if it rains) with snacks, drinks, and books available for purchase.
6:45 pm: Doors open, schmoozing, light refreshments for purchase, including wine
7 pm: Program
Season pass: $50
The first ten people to sign up will get autographed copies of any book they choose.
Regular admission: $10, cash or card accepted at the door.
Full Lineup:
June 15Sam Sussman, Boy From the North Country | June 22Nicholas Lemann, Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries |
June 29Jessica Brilliant Keener, Evening Begins the Day | July 6Zeeva Bukai, The Anatomy of Exile |
July 13TBA | July 20Alice Austen, 33 Place Brugmann |
July 27An Evening of Poetry, Alicia Ostriker & Sarah Stern |
June 15
Sam Sussman
Boy From the North Country
Moderated by Dan Friedman
SAM SUSSMAN is the author of the novel Boy From the North Country, a three-time USA Today bestseller and finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction. Boy From the North Country was hailed by Kirkus as “the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory” and named by Oprah Daily as the best debut novel of Fall 2025. Sussman has written for Harper’s, The Washington Post, and been profiled in the New York Times. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and an M.Phil from Oxford.
June 22
Nicholas Lemann
Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries
Moderated by Lauren Wein
NICHOLAS LEMANN is a professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia Journalism School, and his new memoir, Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries, traces his Louisiana family’s gradual distancing across generations from its Jewish faith and his own efforts to reembrace it. Stace Schiff praised it as “a clear-eyed, literature-rich, original and entirely dazzling memoir.” A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999, Lemann is also the author of The Promised Land, The Big Test, Redemption, and Transaction Man. He lives in New York with his wife, Judith Shulevitz, and is a member of Ansche Chesed’s Minyan M’at.
June 29
Jessica Brilliant Keener
Evening Begins the Day
Moderated by Sheila Lewis
JESSICA BRILLIANT KEENER presents Evening Begins the Day. Her debut novel, Night Swim, was a national bestseller and rose to #9 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Her novel, Strangers in Budapest (Algonquin, 2017) was an Indie Next pick, chosen as a “best new novel” by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Chicago Magazine, and landed on the Southern Independent bestseller list as well as ranking #2 in Jewish Historical Fiction (Amazon). She is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant, creative writing scholarships from Wesleyan University and Brown University, and multiple fellowships awarded by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts as well as a fellowship in Women’s Leadership from the Omega Institute in NY. Her feature articles (more than 100) have appeared in The Boston Globe; O, The Oprah Magazine, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Lilith, Design New England, Writer’s Digest, and the award-winning anthology, Alone Together, Love, Grief, and Comfort in the time of Covid-19, winner of the Washington State Book Award. She lives in the Boston, MA area with her husband.
July 6
Zeeva Bukai
The Anatomy of Exile
Moderated by Sheila Lewis
ZEEVA BUKAI was born in Israel, raised in New York City, and lives and writes in Brooklyn. She is the author of The Anatomy of Exile and The World Between. Her stories have appeared in many publications, and her honors include fellowships from the Center for Fiction, Hedgebrook, and the Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence program. She is the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University.
July 13
TBA
July 20
Alice Austen
33 Place Brugmann
Moderated by Lauren Wein
ALICE AUSTEN is the author of the nationally bestselling debut novel, 33 Place Brugmann, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Praised as a work of “richly imagined new historical fiction” by The New York Times and “a beautiful and deeply engaging novel” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett, the novel is a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle, told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment house in Belgium during World War II. Austen won the John Cassavetes Award for her debut film Give Me Liberty (writer/producer), and is a past resident of the Royal Court Theatre. She studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney at Harvard, where she received her J.D., after which she moved to Brussels and lived on Place Brugmann. Austen currently lives in Milwaukee.
July 27
Alicia Ostriker & Sarah Stern
An Evening of Poetry
Moderated by Owen Lewis
SARAH STERN is the author of four poetry books: Dear Letters in the Red Box (Kelsay Books, 2026), We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune (Kelsay Books, 2018), But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), and Another Word for Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She is a 2026 Yetzirah Yotzer Fellow, six-time winner of the Bronx Council on the arts BRIO Poetry Award, a recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, and several Poets & Writers Readings & Workshops Grants. Stern is an educator at Poets House in New York City. She has taught poetry workshops at Poets House, WritingWorkshops.com, Off Campus Writers’ Workshop (OCWW), the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, the New York Public LIbrary, CSAIR Adult Learning Institute, Hostos Community College, the Bronx Zoo, Edgar Allen Poe Visitor Center, and privately. Stern is the founder of SDGS Solutions, a communications and marketing consultancy. She has worked at universities, cultural centers, and think tanks. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Known for her intelligence and passionate appraisal of women’s place in literature, ALICIA OSTRIKER’S poetry and criticism investigates themes of family, social justice, Jewish identity, and personal growth. Ostriker’s books of criticism include For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book (2009), Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic (2000), and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America (1983). Of her place in American letters, the writer Joyce Carol Oates noted: “Alicia Ostriker has become one of those brilliantly provocative and imaginatively gifted contemporaries whose iconoclastic expression, whether in prose or poetry, is essential to our understanding of our American selves.” Ostriker will be reading selections from two books: The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems 1979-2011 and The Holy and Broken Bliss: Poems in Plague Time (2024).
OWEN LEWIS is a poet and moderator of this evening of poetry. Lewis is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently, A Prayer of Six Wings, following the author’s experience in New York and Tel Aviv following the October 7th massacre in the Negev. He has received the Rumi Prize for Poetry, The Guernsey International Prize, the E.E. Cummings Award, and the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. He is a Professor of Psychiatry in Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University.
