Guilt & Pleasure

SHALOM AUSLANDER

"Mahmoud, Mom; Mom, Mahmoud ...."

Shalom Auslander ("Mahmoud, Mom; Mom, Mahmoud ....") is the author of Beware of God: Stories (Simon & Shuster 2005), which was a finalist for the 2005 Koret Award for writers under 35. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and Nerve.com, and he is a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life. Foreskin’s Lament, a memoir, will be published later this year by Riverhead Books.

Click here to listen to our podcast featuring Shalom Auslander

GERSHOM GORENBERG

Gershom Gorenberg ("Why Things Blow Up") is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (Times Books).

JONATHAN FREEDLAND

Jonathan Freedland ("The von Trapps Strike Back") is an editorial page columnist for The Guardian and the author of Jacob’s Gift, a family memoir. This year, under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, he published The Righteous Men, a thriller set in part among the Hasidim of Crown Heights, New York. It became a number-one best seller in the U.K.

DAVID BEZMOZGIS

David Bezmozgis ("Requiem for My Grandfather, Jakov Milner, Zionist") is a writer and filmmaker. He is the author of Natasha: And Other Stories (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and his work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2005 and 2006.

ETGAR KERET

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Etgar Keret ("Television Without Pity") is an Israeli writer. His most recent story collection, The Nimrod Flipout (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), was chosen as one of the top twenty-five fiction books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times, and as one of the ten best books of 2006 by The Boston Phoenix. The American film Wristcutters: A Love Story, based on a novella by Keret, has been nominated for two Spirit Awards this year.

AARON HAMBURGER

Aaron Hamburger ("The Fair and Unbalanced Truth") received the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters/American Academy in Rome for his short story collection The View from Stalin’s Head (Random House, 2004). His next book, a novel titled Faith for Beginners, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and has just come out in paperback. He teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

SALAR ABDOH

Salar Abdoh’s ("In the Land of the Aryans") novels are The Poet Game (Picador) and Opium (Faber). His essays and short stories have appeared in various publications, including The New York Times and Bomb. He teaches at the City College of New York.

ROYA HAKAKIAN

Roya Hakakian ("The Enemy Next Door") is the author of Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown). She is at work on a new book about the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leaders.

IRSHAD MANJI

Irshad Manji ("Paradise Lost") is president of Project Ijtihad, which helps young Muslims revive Islam’s tradition of critical thinking. She is also author of the international bestseller The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. Her columns are distributed worldwide by the New York Times Syndicate, and she is producing a documentary, Faith Without Fear, about reconciling Islam and freedom. It will air on PBS in April 2007. The New York Times has dubbed Manji “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” She takes it as a compliment.

STACY PERMAN

Stacy Perman ("Vergangenheitsbewältigung!") lives in New York. From 1998 to 1999 she lived in Germany as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow, and as a McCloy Journalism Fellow during the summer of 2006. A former writer with Time magazine, her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine, Sports Illustrated Women, Hadassah Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Currently a writer at BusinessWeek, she is the author of Spies Inc.: Business Innovation from Israel’s Masters of Espionage (Prentice Hall/Financial Times 2004) and the forthcoming The Burger Cult, to be published by HarperCollins in 2008.

MICHA ODENHEIMER

Micha Odenheimer ("Jerusalem Still Burning") lives in Jerusalem. He has written from Ethiopia, Somalia, Iraq, Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, and so on, for publications such as The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Report, and Haaretz. He is on the editorial board of Eretz Acheret magazine. An Orthodox-ordained rabbi, he is in the process of creating a new organization and program called Tevel b’Tzedek, aimed at introducing Israeli and diaspora youth to social-justice issues in the developing world.

JAMIE GLASSMAN

Jamie Glassman ("A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to The Punch Line") is an actor and writer living in London. He was a writer and coproducer on Da Ali G Show for Channel 4 in the U.K. and HBO in the U.S. He will soon be appearing in Piggy Nero’s Hello Dalai in theaters across the U.K.

SAMUEL BLUMENFELD

"Notes from the Asylum"

Samuel Blumenfeld ("Notes from the Asylum") is a journalist who covers film and literature for Le Monde. His most recent book, L’Homme qui voulait être prince, les vies imaginaires de Michal Waszynski (Éditions Grasset) was published in April 2006.

JAMES CONLON

"The Wadi Hadhramaut"

James Conlon ("The Wadi Hadhramaut") is director of the Visual Media Center in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Trained as an architectural conservator and cultural historian of the Middle East, he explores the way design may help us better understand material culture and live with change in the built environment.

NOGA TARNOPOLSKY

"Death in Jerusalem"

Noga Tarnopolsky ("Death in Jerusalem") lives in Jerusalem and during the last dozen years has written about politics and culture for many publications, including The Forward, Haaretz, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. She is currently working on a biography of Rabbi Marshall Meyer for Nextbook.