Cover to Cover | A JCC Book Festival
The JCC is proud to announce the return of the Book Festival! This festival will run from November 2024 through June 2025, with authors presenting monthly. Genres range from Murder Mystery, Poetry, religious debates, women's health, history, and so much more. Every one of these authors is fantastic and eager to meet our community!
Our kick-off event will be November 6th at 7 pm ET, featuring Shira Dicker and her new book, "Lolita, at Leonard's of Great Neck."
Following her event from November 7th to November 14th, the Benderson Family Building will display all author's books, and the Holland Family Building from November 15th to November 22nd.
All authors' books will be sold during the entire duration of the festival.
JCC Members, please login to view discounted member prices
Bookworm | All Access Pass allows individuals to attend all events.
The Page Turner | Flex Pass allows individuals to attend 10 events for the price of 9. This pass can be shared by more than one individual.
Author Events
Shira Dicker
November 6, 2024 | 7:00 pm
Shira Dicker is a restless writer-at-large, activist, and publicist captivated by contemporary culture. She has written for newspapers, magazines, and local, national, and global news sites. The mother of three adult children and a grandmother known as “EeHee,” she lives in NYC with her husband, the writer Ari L. Goldman, and Luke Wilson the Pomeranian.
Lolita at Leonard’s of Great Neck: and Other Stories from the Before Times
The five compelling tales comprising Lolita at Leonard’s of Great Neck and Other Stories from the Before Times take you on an immersive journey from 1974 to the 2000s. Eighteen-year-old Anna, a Jewish college student, meets a German business person at a Greek diner on Queens Boulevard. Claire Seltzer of Great Neck has the honeymoon from hell in Paris. Rebecca, a spunky eighth grader, loves Mr. Miller, her math teacher.
Sarah Reinhardt, the wife of a celebrity doctor living in Central Park West, finds herself in a complicated love triangle. Rachel Rosensweig awakens one morning to find that her husband of thirty years, a Columbia professor, has become a dangerous radical.
The characters of this unforgettable collection inhabit the golden era of the postwar, pre-pandemic world. Age-old power struggles — between lovers, friends, parents, and children — are illuminated and analyzed. Heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious, their stories disclose and document what it meant to be American, Jewish, and female. Rich with cultural touchstones and reference points, they are suffused with self-awareness, longing, and sensual awareness.
Philip Terman
December 5, 2024 | 7:00 pm (In Person & Virtual)
Philip Terman’s books of poetry include The Whole Mishpocha: New and Selected Jewish Poems, 1998-2023, My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024), Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House, 2015), The Torah Garden (Autumn House, 2011) and Rabbis of the Air (Autumn House, 2007) and, as co-translator, Tango Beneatha Narrow Ceiling: The Selected poems of Riad Saleh Hussein (Bitter Oleander, 2021). His poems and essays have appeared in many journals and including Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Tikkun, The Georgia Review and Poetry International, and anthologies, including The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, 101 Poets for the Next Millennium, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of Spiritual Literature, Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. Retired from Clarion University, he served as co-director of the Chautauqua Writers Festival for 14 years. Currently, he directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center in Venango County, PA (https://www.bridgeliteraryartscenter.org/) and is co-curator of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. Recipient of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience, Terman conducts poetry workshops and coaches writing hither and yon. He has collaborated with composers, visual artists, and he performs his poetry with the jazz band Catro. https://philipterman.my.canva.site
The Whole Mishpocha
The poems in Phil Terman’s anthology delicately balance between the universalist and particular, between shtetl and suburbia, tenderness and tacheles, between unspoken names and those lovingly recorded. Most of all, these stellar and masterfully crafted poems are a testament to continuation against the backdrop of loss; a poetic Yizkor, an inventory of Jewish life.
Corinne Copnick
January 8, 2025 | 7:00 pm (Virtual)
Rabbi Corinne Copnick has enjoyed an innovative professional life steeped in the arts: radio actress, art gallery owner, award-winning writer, and mother of 4. An ordained rabbi, at 79 she cruised the world as Guest Staff. Now 88, a former rabbinic court Governor, she still lectures, writes, and podcasts on vital topics.
Miracles Are What You Make of Them
Miracles Are What You Make of Them is an oasis of hope in our chaotic world. An inspirational take on contemporary life intended for everyone, this 2023 book describes the “Will to Continue” and the “Will to Hope” as intertwined with the impetus to act on them at any age.
In a time of increasing societal and political pressures, groundbreaking technological advances, heightened global tensions, and a looming climate crisis, what values sustain us? What gives our lives purpose? Who shares our memories? How can we create our future?
Written from the perspective of a vintage original (an elder, learned Jewish woman), Miracles Are What You Make of Them resonates with Biblical and Talmudic insights highlighted by real-life stories that reflect overcoming circumstances. The author’s deeply felt words (and lyrical poems) become an ethical will for transformative living.
“…we are never too old to teach younger generations how to be hopeful , too.”
Rick Falkowski
January 23, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Rick Falkowski has been involved in all aspects of WNY entertainment during the past 55 years. He is the founder of the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame and Buffalo Music Awards, former publisher of Buffalo Backstage Magazine, entertainment coordinator of Tonawanda's Gateway Harbor Concerts, former representative of the American Society of Authors Composers & Publishers (ASCAP) and a Time Warner retiree. He presents classes on the History of Buffalo Music & Entertainment and Buffalo History at libraries, community centers, schools, senior living centers and for various organizations. In addition, Rick is the author of History of Buffalo Music & Entertainment (2017) and Profiles Volume I: Historic & Influential People from Buffalo & WNY – the 1800s (2019). His latest book, Profiles Volume II: Historic & Influential People from Buffalo and WNY – the Early 1900s, was published in November 2021.
Profiles Volume II: Historic & Influential People from Buffalo & WNY – the Early 1900s
Profiles 75 people that contributed to industry, business, politics, law, communications, sports, entertainment, and culture in Western New York during the early 1900s (1900 to 1950). The book differs from Volume I: Historic & Influential People from Buffalo & WNY - the 1800s as the biological sketches are more detailed and include information about family members and/or associates of the individual being profiled, along with the residences, buildings, and businesses they built. This approach yields details about hundreds of contributors to the fabric of WNY during the first half of the 20th century.
Marina Gerner
February 12, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Marina Gerner is an award-winning financial journalist and Adjunct Professor of Culture and Commerce at NYU Stern School of Business. Her work has been published in The Economist’s 1843, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Financial Times, Wired, The Times Literary Supplement, and Jewish Chronicle. She has received a book grant from the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for this book.
The Vagina Business: The Innovative Breakthroughs that Could Change Everything in Women’s Health
A critical exploration into why male investors are afraid of the v-word, what that means for women’s health and sexual wellness, and how we can overcome it.
Women make over 80% of healthcare decisions in the U.S. yet have been excluded from designing the health system. It was only in 1993 that women and POC were included in clinical trials. Heart attacks are the number-one killer of women, but women are 50% more likely to be given a wrong diagnosis. Only 4% of all healthcare research is focused on women’s health issues. From periods and childbirth to menopause, female pain has been normalized, as society shrugs and says, “Welcome to being a woman” instead of coming up with better solutions.
In The Vagina Business, award-winning journalist Marina Gerner Ph.D. takes an eye-opening — and often shocking — look at the inequities when it comes to scientific research and the funding of female-focused health companies. She exposes the obstacles entrepreneurs around the world face. Most of all, she shows us that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Carol Goodman Kaufman
March 4, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Before becoming a writer, Carol Goodman Kaufman worked as an industrial and organizational psychologist and criminologist. Her published works span multiple genres, including academic research, food history, travel, human interest, children’s literature, and mystery short stories. The First Murder is her first novel.
The First Murder
When Mary Jane Bennett is found dead in her bed — alone, strangled by her scarf, and with every door in the house locked — the medical examiner rules her death accidental, the result of a sex game gone awry. State police decline to investigate further, but Queensbridge Police Chief Caleb Crane doesn’t buy for a minute that his good friend died this way, so he undertakes his investigation.
Facing town councilors afraid of bad publicity, an angry medical examiner, and his demons, Crane labors to solve what he believes is the first-ever murder in his pastoral Berkshire Hills village. Complicating things: the list of suspects includes some of the people he is closest to— including his wife.
The story of Purim and its messages run throughout the book. Who is the killer hiding behind a mask?
Nora Gold
March 22, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Dr. Nora Gold is the prize-winning author of five books and the founder and editor of the prestigious literary journal JewishFiction.net. Her books have won both The Canadian Jewish Literary Award and The Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award, and her writing has been praised by Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, and Dara Horn.
In Sickness and in Health
In Sickness and in Health is a reflective narrative written in the second person. It follows five days in the life of a woman named Lily, who suffers from an undiagnosed ailment that leaves her bedridden for nearly a week every month. Whenever Lily has a series of awful sick days and can’t get out of bed, her mind goes down a rabbit hole: she assumes that her husband is having an affair. To express this anger, Lily learns how to say ridiculous curses and angry phrases in other languages. She regurgitates them in a list, momentarily lightening the seriousness of her condition.
Because Lily’s illness comes and goes regularly, she describes feeling like two different people who cannot coexist. Gold writes clearly about how frustrating the healthcare system can be and how women’s illnesses and disabilities often go untreated. Lily describes being unable to move when she is sick — yet doctors don’t believe the severity of her condition.
Her epilepsy influenced her schooling, her relationships, and her ability to gain autonomy as she grew older. She struggled with bullying and taunting after having seizures. She fears those close to her will never fully understand her if they don’t have a deep understanding of her childhood struggles with epilepsy.
Yom Kippur in a Gym
Yom Kippur in a Gym takes place in a community center gymnasium during the evening service on Yom Kippur, just before the fast ends. It’s told from the perspectives of a handful of characters whose worries, preoccupations, and secrets readers will empathize with. Throughout the story, these characters hope to be forgiven by their community, families, G-d, and themselves. Tom is struggling to maintain a relationship with his siblings, especially after the death of his abusive father. Ira has a mental illness and contemplates suicide. Lucy is finding it difficult to accept her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis. Ezra contemplates the failure of his art career caused by a mistake he made many years ago that he hasn’t forgiven himself for.
The rabbi reminds all the congregants that human beings were created in the image of G-d and that even though Yom Kippur focuses on repentance, they should also “acknowledge [their] good qualities too” to avoid feelings of discouragement and despair. Weak and tired after a day of fasting, everyone is eager for the service to end. Suddenly, an emergency occurs that brings the various narrators together. Each character is thrown out of their prayers and reflective thoughts and forced into a moment of action, propelling them to realize the importance of community and their roles.
Nora Gold
March 23, 2025 | 2:00 pm
Dr. Nora Gold is the prize-winning author of five books and the founder and editor of the prestigious literary journal JewishFiction.net. Her books have won both The Canadian Jewish Literary Award and The Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award, and her writing has been praised by Alice Munro, Cynthia Ozick, and Dara Horn.
18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages
Readers tempted by slim volumes of short stories will take great pleasure in 18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages. Edited by Nora Gold, the book promises to share beautifully crafted fiction that transports readers across the globe in fifteen minutes or less. Instead of trying to answer the age-old question, “What makes a Jewish story a Jewish story?” the collection allows the diverse stories and voices of the authors to take center stage. Indeed, Jewish holidays, community leaders and institutions, important historical events, and antisemitism appear as threads throughout the book. Still, they serve more as an organizing and thematic tool than a statement about the Jewish canon.
These short stories don’t provide an escape from current events. If anything, the intensity of our moment only heightens the complexity and nuances of these works. The result is that although these stories can be read in just a few minutes, they are deeply thought-provoking; we must spend more time with them to appreciate them in full.
This book serves as a testament to the power of translation. Most of the stories were initially written in European languages, and some readers may be disappointed that they do not see more representation from non-Western Jewish cultures. Nevertheless, Gold’s collection is the perfect example of why creating a place for such works is a valuable exercise. With any luck, Gold and other talented authors and translators of Jewish stories will bring us more volumes in the future.
Ari Gold
April 3, 2025 | 7:00 pm (Virtual)
Ari Gold is a filmmaker and winner of the Student Oscar. His films have been selected at Sundance four times, and his upcoming movies Helicopter and Brother Verses Brother are companions to this book.
Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poem
A lushly illustrated "correspondence in poems" spans a remarkable father's life, family, and death. The father and his sons write tenderly of their hunger for connection, about the woman all three men have lost (a mother, a wife), and about the passion all three seek. Ultimately, these poems tell a singular story of men bumbling towards love.
Rusty Rosman
April 9, 2025 | 7:00 pm (Virtual)
Rusty Rosman is a former teacher and commercial real estate broker. Rusty has served as president and fundraiser for several nonprofit community organizations. In her community, where she has lived her entire life, Rusty is a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Property Tax Board. Rusty and her husband Stephen are the very proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to six grandchildren.
Two Envelopes: What You Want Your Loved Ones To Know When You Die
When you die, there are so many things your family and loved ones immediately need to know. Two Envelopes is your voice, conveying your wishes regarding your death and estate. With a unique blend of wisdom, humor, and empathetic storytelling, Rusty Rosman delves into the often-avoided topic of death, offering readers a guide to navigating the complexities of practical and emotional end-of-life planning.
Rusty’s wisdom and heartfelt way of guiding her readers make this book unique among the other online end-of-life planning workbooks.
We all know this to be true:
• We all die.
• We all mourn the passing of loved ones.
• We all must deal with the details related to our loved one’s death.
Your family will appreciate you even more because of what you placed in your two envelopes.
Hanna Temkin (by Helena Temkin)
April 22, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Hanna Temkin, nee Rabinowicz, was born into a traditional, working-class Jewish family in Lodz, Poland in 1921. In many ways her story is like that of others who lived through some of the most horrific episodes of the 20th century, WW2, and the Holocaust. Yet, it is also quite unique in that she introduces the readers to the little known, particularly in the English language literature, wartime Soviet Union where she had to contend with dislocation, hunger, and entirely different social, linguistic, and political systems, starting at the tender age of 18. In the later part of the book, she describes returning to Poland, and then barely 20 years later undergoing another forced emigration this time going west.
My Involuntary Journeys
In My Involuntary Journeys, Hanna Temkin shares her story for the first time, shedding light on lesser-known aspects of Jewish life and survival in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust. Moreover, Hanna’s story is an inspiring tale of female empowerment and a testament to her ability to overcome the worst odds.
Elisa Boxer
April 27, 2025 | 10:00 am (Virtual)
Elisa Boxer is an Emmy-winning journalist and Sydney Taylor Honor-winning author who has written numerous nonfiction books for children. She is passionate about telling stories about unsung heroes who have found the courage to defy social norms and create change, especially during dark times in history. Her books include The Voice that Won the Vote, Covered in Color (called “compelling from cover to cover” in a Kirkus-starred review), and Hidden Hope, which earned three-starred reviews and the Sydney Taylor silver medal. Elisa lives in Maine and has many more books on the way.
The Tree of Life: How a Holocaust Sapling Inspired the World
This delicately told, beautifully illustrated true story is recommended by the publisher for ages five to nine — but, in reality, it’s suitable and valuable for children of all ages. It centers on a particular maple tree with descendants planted in many locations, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
During the Holocaust, a group of inmates, some of them children, smuggled a tiny sapling into their concentration camp and cared for it. It was so important to them that they shared their meager water rations with it. Watching it grow and thrive reminded them that a future was possible despite their harsh surroundings. It gave them the strength to endure the camp.
Seeds from this inspirational tree, a symbol of hope and resilience, bloom today worldwide.
Dov Linzer & Abigail Pogrebin
May 14, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Rabbi Dov Linzer is the President and Rabbinic Head of YCT Rabbinical School of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. He has written for The Forward, Tablet , and The New York Times and published over 100 teshuvot (responsa) and scholarly articles.
Abigail Pogrebin is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew, a finalist for a 2017 JBC National Jewish Book Award, and Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. She has written for The Atlantic, The Forward, and Tablet and moderates conversations for The Streicker Center and Jewish Broadcasting Service.
It Takes Two to Torah: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses
For the first time, readers can tour the Torah through a single instructive, irreverent, involving conversation. Over two years, an Orthodox rabbi and Reform journalist talked through the Five Books of Moses with candor, humor, emotion, personal revelation, and scholarship.
Pogrebin and Linzer engaged in these short dialogues — ten minutes per parsha — on a podcast for Tablet Magazine, and these lively exchanges have now been collected and edited by Fig Tree Books. Dov is a renowned expert in Torah, whose values run egalitarian but have clear parameters about what is correct and comfortable regarding Jewish law. Abby is relatable to every Jew in America — immersed in Jewish life, but less through observance and prayer and more through study, reporting, synagogue, and community.
This book is for anyone looking to access and absorb the Torah in bite-size, relatable nuggets. It Takes Two to Torah is not just an education; it is an invitation — to join the oldest book club in the world.
Larry Tye
May 18, 2025 | 1:00 pm
Larry Tye, a former reporter at The Boston Globe, is now writing books and running a Boston-based fellowship program for health journalists. The Jazzmen is his ninth book, with others including Home Lands, the upbeat tale of a thriving Jewish diaspora; Superman, the biography of America’s longest-lasting (Jewish) hero; and Bobby Kennedy, which looks at RFK’s transformation from Joe McCarthy’s protege to a liberal icon.
The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie Transformed America
The Jazzmen mainly examines these three maestros’ lives off the bandstand and how they wrote the soundtrack for the Civil Rights Revolution. It also explores the Black-Jewish alliance of old—one where each of these African-American bandleaders had a Jewish manager and bandmates—and how that might offer a model for today.
Hilary Zaid
June 5, 2025 | 7:00 pm
Hilary Zaid has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a James D. Houston Fellow at the Community of Writers, and a two-time Tin House Writers’ Workshop attendance. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, Ecotone, Day One, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. Long-listed for the 2018 Northern California Independent Booksellers’ Award for Fiction, her novel Paper is White is a 2018 Foreword Indies silver medalist and the 2018 Independent Publishers’ Book Awards (IPPY) winner in LGBT+ Fiction. Her novel, Forget I Told You This, is the inaugural winner of the Barbara DiBernard Award.
Forget I Told You This
Amy Black, a single mother and an aspiring artist in love with calligraphy, dreams of a coveted artist’s residency at the world’s largest social media company, Q. When a stranger asks Amy to transcribe a love letter for him, his disappearance leads her straight to Q — with the chance to style herself a 21st-century soferet—and to a group of data privacy vigilantes who want her to burn Q to the ground.
A contemporary Jewish novel about faith, free will, and what it means to believe, Forget I Told You asks us what it means to see and be seen in a world where our every move is surveilled.
