Dara Horn

Website : www.darahorn.com
Residence : New York, NY

Biographical information
Dara Horn was born in New Jersey in 1977 and received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University in 2006, studying Hebrew and Yiddish. Her first novel, In the Image, published by W.W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The World to Come , published by W.W. Norton in January 2006, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, was selected as an Editor's Choice in The New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into eleven languages. In 2007, Dara Horn was chosen by Granta magazine as one of the "Best Young American Novelists." She has taught courses in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Harvard and at Sarah Lawrence College, and has lectured at universities and cultural institutions throughout the United States and Canada. She lives with her husband, daughter and son in New York City.

Discussion topics

• "How to Become a Jewish Novelist Without Really Trying"--In this talk, 26-year-old Dara Horn explains how one goes from being forced by one's parents to describe one's school day at the dinner table in five minutes or less (with a timer, so that each of the four siblings could be equally warped) and being dragged to forty-five countries around the world (by parents who may or may not have been spies) to publishing a novel that attempts to redefine what American Jewish literature could be. What does it mean to try to write a novel in a Jewish language-in English? How can the Bible and other religious sources fit into a secular American novel (and why does Dara now get fan mail from religious Christians)? Why did American Jews in past generations throw away their Jewish traditions, and why are so many young people today trying to retrieve them? And what does Costco have to do with Jewish literature? All these questions and more will be answered by Dara Horn-novelist, Harvard Ph.D. (if she ever finishes her dissertation), world traveler, National Jewish Book Award winner, superstore shopper, and one of approximately twelve non-Chassidic people under 30 in North America who can talk to you in Yiddish.

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