I had an emotional experience with some chicken shawarma recently. I’ve never had warm feelings for shawarma before – if you’re curious you can read my piece at Matthew Taub’s lovely new site Local Writeup.
I also had an extraordinarily sweet review this month in Lilith Magazine, which says, “Fierce imagination, fascinating … compulsively readable. Growing Up Golem contains all the power of her earlier work, but it is written without the cloak. Tills new and important ground. Demonstrates Minkowitz’s capacity for personal exposure and vulnerability.” I was thrilled. Thanks, Lilith! If you’re interested, you can read more here.
I was also delighted to get a Kirkus review which said, “Holds nothing back… the same brutal introspection and clever humor [as her first memoir, Ferocious Romance] , but this book is much more personal and sexually explicit … Minkowitz brings a defiant, playful energy to writing about her difficult and dark past. Intelligent but not for the prudish or fainthearted.”
And finally, here are some upcoming readings:
If you’re on Long Island next week, come hear me speak and read from the book at Temple Avodah in Oceanside on the South Shore, Monday, February 24 at 7:30 PM, at 3050 Oceanside Road. More info here.
If you want to find that Ivy League boyfriend or girlfriend, come to the NYC reading I’ll be doing in April with one other author and the filmmaker of “Pier Kids,” sponsored by the Princeton and Yale Gay and Lesbian Alumni Associations! $30 includes Chinese dinner, appetizers, and dessert. Cash bar. Wednesday, April 9, 6:30-9 PM, People Lounge, 163 Allen Street. Reserve here.
I’ll be reading at this cool church called Not So Churchy and doing a short memoir writing workshop at the same time, on Monday, May 5 at 6:30 PM, 85 S. Oxford St. in Brooklyn. They apparently provide chocolate at every worship.
Thrilled that I’ll be speaking at the Sunday platform of the New York Society for Ethical Culture Sunday, June 15 at 11:15 AM. My subject: “On Turning People into Things.”
And for the really big news… drumroll… the first events on the West Coast for Growing Up Golem, will be 1) at Antioch University in LA on May 20 (details TBA), and 2) next October in the San Francisco Bay Area with the LGBT Jewish organization Keshet, the Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav and several other groups. Watch this space for info. :-)