The virtual conference of the Jewish Book Council Network recently took place with lay leaders and staff of United Jewish Federation of Tidewater attending. The JBC Network, which includes roughly 120 member organizations across North America, provides an annual platform through which authors can share their books.
This year, 260 authors presented their books to the Network over Zoom, with each getting two minutes over the course of three days to pitch their book and their speaking style. The goal? To find communities to visit where they can present their books and ideas.
Throughout last year, more than a dozen authors visited Tidewater through the Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival, both in-person and through online events. They covered topics from WWII commandos to vacationing in the Catskills—books specifically about Judaism or Israel, or books on other topics written by Jewish authors. What almost all of them had in common was that the authors had presented their books before the JBC Network.
The lay leaders and staff that attended last month’s conference will narrow the list of more than 200 authors down to those deemed most interesting and most engaging for Jewish Tidewater to create an exciting calendar of events for the 2022–2023 Jewish Book Festival season.
For more information about Arts + Ideas programming, including the Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival, contact Hunter Thomas, director of Arts + Ideas at the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, at HThomas@UJFT.org.
–Hunter Thomas