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Event Topic: Arts & Culture

  • Raheen cocktail soiree: Deborah Conway, Willy Zygier and Alma Zygier

    Raheen cocktail soiree: Deborah Conway, Willy Zygier and Alma Zygier

    A life in music, a life in song, a life in the public eye, a life as child, a mother, a Jew and a Zionist and always a truth telling iconoclast…

    Melbourne Jewish Book Week is proud to present this exclusive event at Raheen, featuring Deborah Conway discussing her candid memoir, Book of Life with daughter and extraordinary vocalist, Alma Zygier. 

    Accomplished musician, Willy Zygier will be joining his wife and daughter on stage for a remarkable family performance. 

    Part interview, part concert, part therapy, this cocktail soiree offers a unique glimpse into the life of one of Australia’s most respected artists.

  • Yiddish Hauntings in New Fiction and Film

    Yiddish Hauntings in New Fiction and Film

    Join Tali Lavi in conversation with Eleanor Reissa, Dr. Leah Kaminsky and Professor Rebecca Margolis as they speak of the power of Yiddish in representing the Ashkenazi Jewish experience in new fiction, television and film. What happens when today’s artists employ Yiddish in their work? This session will draw upon the mysterious and the uncanny in reimagining Jewish pasts. Come prepared for the unexpected to occur.

  • Revelations: Poetry as Performance

    Revelations: Poetry as Performance

    Poetry lends itself to being lifted off pages and into the air. When asked to read their own work poets might consider how and why some verses wield performative power in terms of theme, rhythm and sounds. Some resonate and echo — travel through space with striking clarity or confounding chaos. Join Alex Skovron, Louise Helfgott and Magdalena Ball and Eva Collins as they reveal the inner workings of their process, with fellow poet Shoshy Rockman as facilitator.

  • MJBW + JIFF present ‘The Last Chapter of A.B. Yehoshua’ (Film screening)

    MJBW + JIFF present ‘The Last Chapter of A.B. Yehoshua’ (Film screening)

    Writer A.B. Yehoshua, one of the key figures of the Israeli New Wave, has been called “the Israeli Faulkner” by The New York Times. Now 84 and widowed, he struggles with loneliness and health setbacks, yet his mind remains agile and his perspective clear.

    Join us for a compelling live pre-screening introduction from Elliot Perlman, the bestselling author of Maybe the Horse Will Talk, The Street Sweeper, and Three Dollars. The Last Chapter of A.B.Yehoshua offers a rare and fascinating look at one of Israel’s most beloved writers, who passed away in June 2022.

  • Book Chat: Sue Smethurst on ‘The Freedom Circus’

    Book Chat: Sue Smethurst on ‘The Freedom Circus’

    Sue Smethurst is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent more than 20 years working in the media across television, radio and magazines. She is currently a senior writer with The Australian Women’s Weekly and has written eight books, including Behind Closed Doors, Spartacus and Me, Blood on the Rosary and A Diamond in the Dust. In her book chat, Sue talks about her latest work, ‘The Freedom Circus’, the remarkable true story of her parents-in-law’s epic journey to Australia.

    Sue discusses the importance of recording family history, putting her journalistic skills to use on a highly personal project, and the final conversation she wishes she could have with Mindla, her extraordinary grandmother-in-law.

  • Book Chat: Ayelet Tsabari on ‘The Art of Leaving’

    Book Chat: Ayelet Tsabari on ‘The Art of Leaving’

    Ayelet Tsabari is an Israeli writer who was born into a large family of Yemeni descent. She has also spent many years living in Canada. Her first book, the collection of short stories The Best Place on Earth, was the recipient of the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize and a New York Time’s Book Review Editor’s Choice. Tsabari’s second book, The Art of Leaving, a memoir in essays was published in 2019, and won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir. Ayelet teaches creative non-fiction writing in Canada at the University of Guelph, and University of King’s College.

    In her book chat, Ayelet discusses her experience growing up as a Yemini Jew in Israel, and the conflict between longing for freedom and a sense of home.

  • Yiddish in Performance

    Yiddish in Performance

    Yiddish performance, whether in theatrical, spoken or music form, is alive and well in Melbourne. Our panel of practitioners and researchers discuss what such performances tell us about ourselves, our past and our identity.

    Nicola Mensa Hearn (moderator), Galit Klas, Rebecca Margolis, Simon Starr

  • Creative Writing Through Circus Skills (for primary-aged children)

    Creative Writing Through Circus Skills (for primary-aged children)

    Simi Genziuk facilitates a unique creative writing workshop for children by combining her two passions, circus and writing. Participants learn the basis of three to four circus skills and use the experience as the inspiration for creative writing exercises. As part of the event, storyteller Zoe Bell will be doing a reading of Simi’s book, So She Did.

    This workshop is one hour in duration, and participants find it extremely gratifying. Most kids leave with a skill and a story!

  • Memory, Music, Poetry and Prose

    Memory, Music, Poetry and Prose

    Famed concert pianist, Simon Tedeschi, and New Zealand poet, Bryan Walpert, discuss the place of memory, music, poetry and prose in their creative and personal lives, in conversation with popular ABC RN radio presenter, Sarah Kanowski.

  • Opening Night Gala: In Our Nature

    Opening Night Gala: In Our Nature

    Join us as Melbourne Jewish Book Week presents In Our Nature – an opening night of original storytelling featuring writers, musicians and  performers live on stage at Melbourne’s Memo Hall. 

    Travel to landscapes near and far, real and imagined, thriving and disappearing. Meet creatures of flight, fur, and fancy from places urban and  remote, vast and infinitesimal. Hear private encounters with the living world that brought with them inexorable change. And peer into those  geographies of the soul – landscapes we carry inside us that guide our engagement with the outside world.

    Featuring writers Mireille Juchau, Marina Benjamin (UK), Simon Tedeschi, Daniel Sherell (US), Byran Walpert (NZ), Karen Hitchcock, Kyra Maya Phillips, multidisciplinary artist and musician Anita Lester, pianist, composer and songwriter Gideon Preiss and shadow artist and theatre director Lynne Kent. Hosted and produced by writer and audio maker Jaye Kranz.