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News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY For immediate release: Oct. 10, 2001 Contact: Marilyn Marks, 609-258-3601, mailto:mmarks@Princeton.edu Major Princeton conference to explore Jewish-American writers, artistsLibrary releases never-published works by Henry Roth, I.B. Singer, others Princeton, N.J. -- More than two dozen well-known writers and cartoonists -- from E.L. Doctorow to Wendy Wasserstein, from Art Spiegelman to Susan Sontag -- will be on the Princeton University campus Oct. 21-23 for a conference on Jewish-American writing. The conference coincides with an exhibition at Firestone Library marking the opening of the Leonard Milberg '53 Collection of Jewish-American Writers and the release of a double volume of never-published stories, essays and poems by prominent American writers. The double volume, a 392-page special edition of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, will include previously unpublished stories, essays and poems by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Henry Roth and other writers and critics; excerpts from a novel in progress by Cynthia Ozick; and facsimiles of previously unpublished letters by Lionel Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Philip Roth and Alfred Kazin. Princeton alumnus Leonard Milberg "has made an enormously generous contribution to the future of Jewish studies at Princeton," said Ben Primer, acting associate University librarian for rare books and special collections. "Altogether, these events offer an amazing breadth and depth of information about Jewish-American writing." The conference, "Celebrating Jewish-American Writers," opens 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21 in Alexander Hall with readings by playwright Tony Kushner, essayist and author Susan Sontag, novelist Marge Piercy, short-story master and poet Grace Paley, and poets Robert Pinsky and C. K. Williams. Playwright Wendy Wasserstein will present the opening lecture, on "My Life in the Theater," at 8:30 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall. Author E. L. Doctorow will deliver the keynote address at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 22 in the Film and Dance Theater in the Frist Campus Center. For a full list of participants, see below. In addition to reading their work, writers and scholars will participate in panels to discuss Yiddish America, American irony, the fiction of identity and the Holocaust. Artists Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer and Art Spiegelman will explore the work of Jewish cartoonists and artists in a roundtable discussion called "COMIX!!" Conference events are sponsored by Princeton's Program in Jewish Studies and are open to the public. For the complete schedule, visit <~jwst/writers/program.html>. The Princeton conference "is the first and probably the largest such gathering of Jewish-American writers ever," said Morris Dickstein, professor of English and senior fellow of the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who will participate. The exhibition of selected items from the Milberg Collection of Jewish-American Writers, which opens in the gallery of Firestone Library Oct. 21 and will remain on display through April 21, was two years in the making. It was the brainchild of Leonard Milberg, a member of Princeton's class of 1953 and a passionate collector. More than 130 writers are represented in the collection, which includes poetry, fiction, drama and essays. Among the items are sermons from the 19th century; the memoirs of Leonardo da Ponte, who penned librettos for Mozart; works in Yiddish by Celia Dropkin and Chaim Grade; books by contemporary fiction writers Allegra Goodman and Nathan Englander; and essays by Jewish intellectuals Harold Bloom, Philip Rahv and Norman Podhoretz. There are also manuscripts, such as a draft of a poem by Stanley Kunitz later included in a prize-winning collection of his poetry. The collection will be available to researchers in Firestone Library. To assemble the forthcoming double volume of the Library Chronicle, a scholarly journal for the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the organizers wrote to every living author whose work was included in the Milberg collection and asked for a submission of an unpublished work. Several essays also were commissioned, and some writers whose work does not appear in the collection also were asked to contribute. In his search for unpublished works to bring to light, Milberg and Princeton Professor Michael Wood, chairman of the English department, pored through about 20 file cabinets brimming with the unpublished work of Henry Roth at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City. They discovered a short story called "Antica Fiamma," about a man who runs into a former girlfriend. In the Chronicle, Wood paired the story with an excerpt from Roth's journal in which Roth recalls running into a former girlfriend. The story and diary excerpt will give readers a sense of how Roth transformed a real-life experience into fiction, Wood said. Also remarkable are the two stories by I.B. Singer. Singer, who grew up in Poland and emigrated to the United States, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. His varied and rich body of work, most of it written in Yiddish, make him an important link from the Yiddish writing of the Old World to the Jewish-American writers of the 20th century. Singer died in 1991. One story, titled "Distinguished Lineage" in the English translation, tells the tale of a father who moves up in the world and decides that, because of his elevated status, he should break off his daughter's betrothal to a baker and marry her to someone from a good family. "The story has Singer's wonderful sardonic humor, and it gives a sense of the lost world he's writing from," Milberg said. Singer's stories will appear in the Chronicle in the original Yiddish, accompanied by an English translation. Milberg is the chairman of Milberg Factors Inc., a finance company in New York City. He has given Princeton University several collections, including the Leonard L. Milberg Collection of Irish Poetry and "Pride of Place," a collection of American prints. In 1998, the Friends of Princeton University Library presented him with the Hyde Award "for distinction in book collecting and service to the community of scholars." "There are a lot of surprises here, and I hope people will find them," Milberg said. "I'm looking forward to the discoveries they make. This is a field in which a lot has been written, but there are still many questions to be answered." The collection, its publications and the conference are dedicated to Harold T. Shapiro, president of Princeton from 1988 to 2001. Editors note: Journalists are invited to a pre-conference lunch and background session 1 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15. They will receive advance copies of the Library Chronicle and have an opportunity to speak with scholars and curators involved in planning the events. RSVPs are required by 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 12. Reply to Natalie Lennon at (609) 258-3601 or via e-mail to Marilyn Marks, mmarks@Princeton.edu. Robert Alter: Professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, critic, essayist, editor and translator. Max Apple: Author of eight books and professor emeritus of English at Rice University. His articles and stories have appeared in Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and other publications. James Atlas: Founding editor of the Lipper/Viking Penguin Lives Series, longtime contributor to The New Yorker, and editor at The New York Times Magazine for many years. Atlas is also author of "Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet" and "Bellow -- A Biography." Melvin Jules Bukiet: Author and essayist, editor of the anthology "Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex," teacher in the Graduate Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College. Morris Dickstein: Professor of English at Queens College and director of the City University of New York Institute for the Humanities. E. L. Doctorow: Author of nine novels and Glucksman Professor of American Letters at New York University. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Arts and Letters Award, and the National Book Award. Will Eisner: Author, artist, graphic novelist. His masked crime-fighting hero "The Spirit," was launched in 1940 as a weekly comic book insert and was syndicated worldwide for a dozen years. Leslie Epstein: Author and director of the creative writing program at Boston University. He has published eight books of fiction. Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi: Professor of comparative Jewish literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her study "By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature" was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Jules Feiffer: Cartoonist, playwright, novelist, children's writer, essayist. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and Academy Award for animated cartoon, Munro. Kathryn Hellerstein: Senior fellow in Yiddish and Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, translator, poet. Alan Isler: Professor of English literature at New York's Queens College from 1967 to 1995. His debut novel was "The Prince of West End Avenue," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award for fiction. Ben Katchor: Artist and cartoonist. His eccentric, Yiddish-inflected comic strips have been a feature in the magazine Forward and syndicated in alternative weeklies around the world. MacArthur Fellow, 2000. Irena Klepfisz: Poet and adjunct associate professor at Barnard College in the Department of Women's Studies. Tony Kushner: Playwright. His two-part play, "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," received a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, the New York Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. Daniel Mendelsohn: Lecturer in classics at Princeton University, writer, critic. His articles and reviews appear in The New York Times, The Nation, Esquire, The New Yorker, Lingua Franca, Salon.com, Slate.com, Talk, and Out. Weekly book critic for New York magazine. Alicia Ostriker: Author of 10 volumes of poetry, professor of English at Rutgers University, essayist. Grace Paley: Author and poet. Her short stories have appeared in four books and in publications including The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. She was the first official New York State writer, in 1989. Marge Piercy: Poet, novelist, essayist. She has published numerous books of poetry. Her most recent novels are "Three Women"; "Storm Tide" (with Ira Wood); "City of Darkness, City of Light"; "The Longings of Women"; and "He, She and It." Robert Pinsky: Poet, professor at Boston University, poetry editor of Slate. Poet laureate of the United States, 1997-2000. His work has received many honors, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "The Inferno of Dante," a new verse translation. Thane Rosenbaum: Novelist, literary editor of Tikkun and professor at Fordham Law School, where he also directs the program in Morality, Humanities and the Law. His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Alvin Rosenfeld: Professor of English, writer and director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. Jeffrey Shandler: Assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. He has written and lectured widely on such topics as modern Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish memory culture, American responses to the Holocaust, and the role that broadcasting, film, photography, and other media play in modern Jewish life. Susan Sontag: Essayist and novelist. Her latest novel, "In America," won the National Book Award for fiction. Art Spiegelman: Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. His "MAUS" graphic novels have been translated into 20 languages. Spiegelman co-founded the avant-garde Raw magazine in 1980. Cover artist, contributor and consulting editor for The New Yorker. Wendy Wasserstein: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and essayist. "The Heidi Chronicles" earned her the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and an Outer Critics Circle award among other prizes. C. K. Williams: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, prose writer, translator, faculty member at Princeton University. Jonathan Wilson: Professor of English and Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University. He has published two books on Saul Bellow, three works of fiction, and numerous essays, reviews and stories. Hana Wirth-Nesher: Professor of English at Tel Aviv University. She has written and edited books and numerous articles on Jewish literary topics. James Young: Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 1997, he was appointed by the Berlin Senate as a member of a special committee which selected a design for Germany's national Memorial to Europe's murdered Jews.
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