They’re having a festival at UCLA June 29.
Here’s the one thing I’m interested in:
Writers Shalom Auslander and Daphne Merkin consider the therapist’s couch as a particularly Jewish space, from Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis to Woody Allen and In Treatment to their own musings on the “Jewish science.” They are joined in conversation by Joanna Smith Rakoff, editor of nextbook.org.
Shalom Auslander is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Beware of God and the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, a New York Times Notable Book for 2007. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. He is a regular contributor to nextbook.org and public radio’s This American Life.
Daphne Merkin is the author of a novel, Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best work of American-Jewish fiction, as a well as the non-fiction collection Dreaming of Hitler. She has published fiction, reviews, and essays in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New Leader, American Scholar, and The New York Times Book Review. She has also contributed to numerous anthologies, ranging from Women On Divorce: A Bedside Companion to Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, where she writes on matters of sex, style, and culture.
Joanna Smith Rakoff is Editor in Chief of nextbook.org. Her novel, Brooklyn, is forthcoming from Scribner in 2009. She has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Vogue, and many other publications.