Free online conversations with leading voices in Israeli literature — live every two weeks. A short author talk, audience Q&A, and a direct encounter with contemporary Hebrew writing.
Israelis and American Jews — in Life and Literature
Hosted by Jamie Denbo
With Tehila Hakimi and Joshua Cohen
A conversation with two major authors, Tehila Hakimi and Joshua Cohen, whose books engage directly with the cultural meeting/crashing between Israel and the United States. Cohen's novel, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, expands on a historical episode in which Ben-Zion Netanyahu visited an American university with his family; Hakimi traces the winding journey of a young Israeli woman through the maze of social rituals in American tech culture.
How do these encounters reflect the cultural interplay between Israel and America — America as a lived reality, as an object of desire, and as fantasy — and the literary tradition that grapples with this relationship? To what extent can the ongoing dialogue between the two cultures illuminate the history of relations between the two countries, right up to the present moment?
Author of Hunting in America.
Described by the TLS as the author of “a singular debut novel”, and praised by Libération for the “quiet precision of prose”. Tehila Hakimi is a Jewish Book Council Award–winning fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in translation in Lit Hub, Asymptote, World Literature Today, and The Poetry Review. A 2018 Fulbright International Writing Program Fellow at the University of Iowa.
Author of The Netanyahus.
Called “a major American writer” by the New York Times, and “an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious at work in fiction today” by the New Yorker, Joshua Cohen is the author of numerous novels, as well as collections of short fiction and nonfiction. He was awarded the 2013 Matanel Prize, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. The Netanyahus won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Featured book
A Novel
by Tehila Hakimi · Translated by Joanna Chen · Penguin Books
Buy the book on Amazon
Featured book
An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
by Joshua Cohen · Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2022 · Fitzcarraldo Editions
Buy the book on Amazon
Co-Executive Producer on four seasons of Grey's Anatomy and creator of Lifetime's American Princess. As an actor, over 100 credits including Orange Is the New Black and Curb Your Enthusiasm. For twelve years one half of the alt-comedy podcast Ronna & Beverly; now performs solo as “Beverly” worldwide. The (NEW) Beverly Podcast launched February 2026.
What to expect
Join one event or follow the full series of free online conversations with Israeli authors — every two weeks.