"Sadness is a White Bird" Book Reading with Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Monday, February 24, 2025 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM EST
Art & Design Building, Gillespie Gallery
Join acclaimed author Moriel Rothman-Zecher for an engaging reading and discussion of his novel, Sadness is a White Bird.
In this “nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written” (Michael Chabon) debut novel, a young man prepares to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country.
Rothman-Zecher will share insights into his writing process and discuss themes explored in the novel, along with his broader body of work that continues to captivate readers and critics alike.
This project was supported, in part, by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
ABOUT MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is the author of the novels Before All the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books / Simon and Schuster), for which he received the National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ Honor, and which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the winner of the Ohioana Book Award, a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. His poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, Nashville Review, The New York Times, The Paris Review’s Daily, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. Moriel is the recipient of two MacDowell Fellowships for Literature (2017 & 2020), a Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship for Yiddish Cultural Studies (2018-2019), and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where he was the recipient of a Donald Hall Scholarship for Poets (2021-2023). Moriel teaches creative writing at Swarthmore College, where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, and is a member of the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars’ MFA Program.
COMMUNITY BUILDING AND CURATORIAL PROCESS:
Mason Exhibitions collaborates with the Cheuse Center hosting Cheuse events in exhibition spaces with curators in both organizations working with the artists and photographers/videographers, Steven Luu and Klara Kalu to highlight the importance of community organizing and gathering. By working to curate multi-generational public and civic spaces we aim to impact civil public discourse through literature and art. During Moriel and Oksana's visits, the artist on display at Gillespie Gallery is Morgan Ashcom:
ABOUT MORGAN ASHCOM, THE ARTIST
Morgan Ashcom's multidisciplinary artworks and books explore the tension between fiction, myth and lived experience in the context of imperialism. Ashcom's work has been exhibited and published across the globe. He has received numerous awards including German Photobook and the Center for Photography at Woodstock Purchase Prize. His work has been featured in Le Monde, The Brooklyn Rail, Jewish Currents, and The British Journal of Photography. Ashcom is former faculty of Western Connecticut State University, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Cornell University and the University of Virginia. He is also the Founding Director of Visible Records. He currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA.
