Eva Kollisch
and Gerry Albarelli
Thursday, July 12th, 7:30 pm
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Join
us for a reading with Eva Kollisch and Gerry Albarelli Thursday, July 12th, 7:30 pm |
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 Introduction
by Grace PaleyGrace Paley, the honored and beloved writer, will join us to introduce two writers she appreciates enough to have helped get their work published through Glad Day Books, a writers' collaborative that aims to bridge the gap between imaginative literature (fiction) and political articles and criticism (non-fiction). "We are restoring an older tradition," says the collective, “offering a politics of hope." |
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Eva Kollisch and her brothers were rescued from the Nazis on a Kindertransport in 1939 and sent to England. After coming to the U.S. in 1940, she went to high school, worked in factories during World War II, then attended college and graduate school. She taught German and Comparative Literature at Sarah Lawrence College for thirty years and is now retired. Her stories and essays have appeared in Global City Review, Green Mountains Review, Zircular/Literaturhaus Wien, and in the anthology, A Woman Like That. At present she is at work on a book of stories and essays on the themes of anti-Semitism and exile. She will read from her memoir, Girl in Movement, about which poet Jane Cooper has commented, "What is immediately striking about this memoir is that it relates a girl's coming of age (a girl's, not a young man's) in specifically political as well as sexual terms...I'm dazzled by her courage.."
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Gerry Albarelli's memoir, Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva, tells the story of a year in the life of a young man, who is not even Jewish, much less an Hasidic Jew, who responds to an ad in the paper that says, "English teacher wanted - yeshiva - Brooklyn - call Rabbi Steine." After a cursory job interview, he is advised by the head rabbi, "Think of it this way, you're going to Mars." If not quite Mars, it is chaos, but Albarelli triumphs over it by making it a piece of theatre. It is no surprise to learn that this gifted writer is also now the administrator of the Actors Studio in New York City. His forthcoming Midnight Mass: Stories of Italian-American Childhood will be published in 2002. |
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Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members) This series made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. Additional funding has been provided by The Bydale Foundation. |
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