Award-winning Poet Miriam Flock Shares First Novel, WILD GRAPES!

Join award-winning poet who will be in conversation with Columbus artist, writer, and playwright about her debut novel , the story of a remarkable group of Jewish grape farmers who settled in Geneva, Ohio, between the turn of the century and the Great Depression.

The admission fee is waived with the pre-purchase of Wild Grapes. The book will also be available at the event.

OHIO POETRY ASSOCIATION is Gramercy’s Community Partner for this program.

It's 1918, and Bluma Rappaport can't wait to set sail for America where her husband has gone to start a new life--ostensibly for their whole family. But when Sender fails to send money for their passage, Bluma takes matters into her own hands. She and her three daughters show up on his doorstep, which turns out to be broken, just one of the problems with the derelict farm he purchased. Though inspired by the Jewish back-to-the-land movement, Sender has been spending more time studying Torah than he has plowing and harvesting. Worse, Bluma's hopes for her daughters are soon shaken. Can she protect them from the hollow marriage and lack of education that have been her own fate? Facing challenges such as the Spanish flu pandemic, the anti-Semitism of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, and the Great Depression, Bluma relies on her wits and her wry sense of humor to pull the family through.

Miriam Flock, an award-winning poet and non-fiction writer, begins a new phase of her writing life as a novelist with Wild Grapes. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook The Scientist's Wife. Formerly COO of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, Miriam helped to found one of the most popular websites on ethical issues in the world. A product of the Stanford University Master's in Creative Writing Program, Miriam also has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia. The subject of Wild Grapes is near to her heart as both sets of her grandparents and her parents were part of the Jewish community that tried to go back to the land under the auspices of the Jewish Agricultural Society. She, herself, spent her early life on a farm in Chagrin Falls.

Michael J. Rosen is a creator of art in many forms. Best known as the author of a wide variety of more than 150 books for both adults and young readers—poet, editor, writer of fiction and nonfiction, humorist, playwright, and longtime champion and editor of James Thurber’s works—he has worked in the field of art, design, and illustration even since first publishing drawings in The New Yorker and Gourmet while he was in graduate school. He has received many distinguished awards and citations for his work. For the last 30 years, he’s lived on 100 forested acres in the foothills of the Appalachians, east of Columbus, Ohio where he spent most of his life.

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