FB EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/27879648721622240

LINK: https://athenslibrary.libcal.com/event/13334860

What does it mean to go “home” to a language, culture, and history of trauma.  Each participating author will share creative writing as Jewish-Americans and what it means to “go home” to “New Jewish” European citizenship, to new fluencies in the German language, and to Holocaust history through contemporary Jewish-American perspectives.  

Featured speakers:

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections The Babies and Tsim Tsum. Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, was published by Dorothy, a publishing project. Happily, which began as a monthly column on fairytales and motherhood in The Paris Review, was published by Random House in 2023 and won a National Jewish Book Award. She has received fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.   

Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the author of The Creative  Ethnographer's Notebook (2024), the poetry book, Imperfect Tense (2016) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award, her poems have appeared in Georgia Review, Bitter Southerner, Lilith, Poet Lore, Rattle, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere.  January 2024 she and her two children acquired German citizenship.

Carly Hamburger Ornstein is the granddaughter of German Holocaust survivors. After the loss of her father in 2021, she began deeply exploring her German heritage. Originally from Baltimore, Carly now lives with her family in Athens, GA where she works as a health education consultant and an amateur genealogical sleuth.

Michael Wegner has performed and recorded with scores of musical artists, including Indigo Girls, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads, Vic Chesnutt, and River Phoenix. His award winning Beatles tribute band Abbey Road LIVE! has been delighting audiences for 20+ years, and since 2016 he has served as band leader for "Athens In Harmony", an annual duets concert which pairs vocalists from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.  A prolific songwriter in his own right, Michael's original music saw him recognized as a finalist for the 2022 Vic Chesnutt Songwriter of the Year award.