Ayelet Tsabari on "Songs for the Brokenhearted"

Author of the award-winning Songs for the Brokenhearted, Ayelet Tsabari will speak of growing up Yemeni in Israel, about re-finding and reclaiming that identity through writing and through extensive research into Yemeni culture and traditions. Tsabari will share audio and images from her research into the Yemeni women's songs, and speak of some of the unique challenges she has faced writing about Israel in English, her second language. This lecture will explore the many ways in which a writer's cultural background, mother tongue, and origins influence and inform her writing, in terms of both content and style.

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She is the author of The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, finalist for the Writers' Trust Hilary Weston Prize, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally. Tsabari is the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Her most recent book, Songs for the Brokenhearted (2024) has won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the Association of Jewish Libraries' Fiction Award.

Ayelet has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing, The University of King's College MFA, Tel Aviv University, and at Bar Ilan University.

*Guests must register by Tuesday, October 21 to ensure campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Appel families.

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Host or Publisher The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University