Program Description
Details
National Jewish Book Award winning author, Dara Horn delivered the 2023 Holocaust Memorial Lecture at the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College on October 3, 2023. Join us to watch a recording of the lecture, In the Haunted Present: Jews in a Non-Jewish World which is based on her latest and award winning book, People Love Dead Jews.
"In her latest book, acclaimed author Dara Horn explores a pointed question: Why do far too many people seem to love dead Jews, but ignore the living ones? In 2023, the Holocaust continues to make headlines, fill our films and fiction, and generate extraordinary interest far beyond our community. Yet ignorance and indifference towards Jew-hatred today seems to be higher than ever. What's going on?"
Following the lecture, facilitator Anne Romney will lead a discussion about the lecture and book. Copies of the book are available to borrow. The audiobook is available to download via Hoopla for free with your library card.
This is partnership of the Portsmouth Public Library, the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and is facilitated by Anne Romney.
Registration is not required.
Please Note
We schedule and plan our events several months in advance. We recognize that this event now comes at a particularly fraught time, which was unintentional. The lecture, as well as Dara Horn’s recent essay collection, focuses on overcoming antisemitism in our culture, rather than the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. One of the library’s core values is promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. We strive to educate, engage, and empower the community through educational programs like this one. We believe the message of this lecture is an important one, and the topic is worth discussing even as it intersects with current events. If you are interested, we encourage you to borrow a copy of Dara Horn’s book, read some or all of the essays, and come to explore and discuss your thoughts in a safe and welcoming environment. The discussion will be led by Anne Romney, a seasoned facilitator who ran our Standing Up to Racism workshops as well as our series on the U.S. and the Holocaust. Should you have any questions, please contact us at libraryevents@cityofportsmouth.com.
About Dara Horn
Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books, including the novels In the Image, The World to Come, All Other Nights, A Guide for the Perplexed, and Eternal Life, and the essay collection People Love Dead Jews.
One of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, she is the recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. She was a finalist for the JW Wingate Prize, the Simpson Family Literary Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books, Booklist’s Best 25 Books of the Decade, and San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of the Year, and have been translated into eleven languages. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Jewish Review of Books, among many other publications, and she is a regular columnist for Tablet.
Horn received her doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature from Harvard University. She has taught courses in these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College and Yeshiva University, and has held the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She has lectured for audiences in hundreds of venues throughout North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.