*Nancy's Availability for Talks, Readings, and Presentations* 

 

Nancy has presented her work at libraries, synagogues, art galleries, and other venues and to high school students in the US and UK.  Here are some of the themes she has explored and can present to your group:

 

 "The Art of Flash in Short Fiction and Novella." Nancy's prize-winning flash stories, including some as short as 100 words and others up to 1000 words, have been published in journals for over 25 years, translated into Spanish, read aloud on public radio, and reprinted in Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022.  In October 2022, her debut collection Collateral Damage: 48 Stories won Snake Nation Press' annual fiction prize and was published by SNP, going on to receive terrific reviews in Hadassah Magazine and elsewhere.  Her novella Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life (WTAW Press 2023), was a finalist for an esteemed prize as well, and has won accolades from Hadassah Magazine and on Aish and other websites.  For this event, she would first speak about writing flash, what drew her to the form and some techniques for writing great flash, including stories from Collateral Damage as well as flash stories by Hemingway and Kafka. Nancy would then show how she used flash techniques in writing Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life (considered by some to be novella-in-flash), using excerpts from that book.

 

Nancy has also taught and can present on the subject of  "Writing Historical Fiction Based on a Limited Historical Record: Challenges and Opportunities." For this presentation, she would discuss the research behind her writing of Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life, including how she used Sarra's father's will, letters written to Sarra by a Catholic poet, and Sarra's own poetry and prose in writing her novella. She will also discuss her research into late 16th-century and early 17th-century Venice generally. For this session, she could also compare her research for Sarra Copia to the research for another piece of historical fiction, her short story "The Loneliness Cure," about a young woman who became a Hasidic rebbe in early 18th century Ukraine (awarded Orison Books' Best Spiritual Literature prize for fiction and published in Orison's Best Spiritual Literature Vol. 7 2022).

 

Nancy can also teach on the subject of "Jewish Fathers and Daughters in Literature." In this session, Nancy would contrast the relationship of Sarra Copia and her father with that of Jessica and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and discuss the father/daughter relationships in other Jewish literary and historical contexts, particularly the father's role in educating his daughter or daughters when there are no sons. This is a theme in Nancy's story "The Loneliness Cure" as well as in Sarra Copia: A Locked-in Life and was a factor in the education of Jewish women from medieval times to the present, another topic about which Nancy has taught.