Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Lisa Alcalay Klug: Releasing Your Inner Heebster
  Posted on 15 Sep 2008 in Interviews, Religion
  

  But for now, there is only one book and it’s a book that’s all about shouting loudly and proudly that it’s great to be a Jew. The idea for her book came about following an article she wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2005. “I was writing a feature about how cool it is to be a Jew in San Francisco and I profiled local ‘Heebsters’ as I now call them,” she says.

• Night Swimming - by Robin Schwarz
  Posted on 22 Apr 2007 in Fiction Reviews
  

  What would you do if you went to your doctor for a routine check up only to discover that you had a year left to live?

• How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
  Posted on 22 Apr 2007 in History, Israel, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  There’s an old saying among the Jews that goes something along the lines of: we don’t need others to destroy us, because we’re pretty good destroying ourselves. In other words, the red flags were already up when Richard Ben Cramer a “self-confessed proud Jew and pro-Israel supporter” came along and wrote How Israel Lost – the Four Questions.

• Devil In The Details - by Jennifer Traig
  Posted on 11 Apr 2007 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Psychology
  

  All parents of adolescents despair of them, particularly those with teenage daughters. Endless hours on the telephone, picky eating habits, emotional outbursts.

• Dancing With Einstein by Kate Wenner
  Posted on 11 Apr 2007 in Fiction Reviews
  

  Combining fact with fiction, Kate Wenner’s “Dancing with Einstein” is a carefully crafted novel that manages to wrap a piece of history into beautiful alliterative prose with its portrait of a young woman struggling to make sense of her life.

• Campus Sexpot by David Carkeet
  Posted on 10 Apr 2007 in Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sex
  

  Naturally, the publishing of this book complete with its intrigue, loose morals, and the real citizens’ names thinly disguised, set the town on its ear.

• About My Sisters - by Debra Ginsberg
  Posted on 10 Apr 2007 in Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Ginsberg writes in vivid fly-on-the-wall detail about the complex relationships she has with each of her sisters.

• A Chance Meeting: by Rachel Cohen
  Posted on 10 Apr 2007 in Art, Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, Photography
  

  In this, her debut book, Harvard graduate Rachel Cohen weaves a literary tapestry encompassing the lives of 30 of America’s great writers, photographers and artists, into 36 distinct chapters. Part biography, part flight-of-fancy speculation, Cohen’s final product, complete with references, source material, and footnotes was 10 years in the making.

• Mullahs, Mini Skirts and Carson Daly
  Posted on 03 Apr 2007 in History, Interviews, Iran, Politics
  

  “Part of the richness of the home culture I come from and what makes it fascinating to work in Iran as a journalist is that I wasn’t an observer. I am culturally of Iran. At the end of the day I’m not going back to a hotel room. I’m going to my aunt’s house or best friend’s house. I’m waking up in the morning to my aunt cooking pancakes.”

• Confessions of a Porn Writer
  Posted on 31 Mar 2007 in Interviews, Movies, Sex, Writers
  

  “I had been hired to write a movie for the Playboy channel – soft porn. I didn’t know that Playboy had co-financed it with an adult film company and suddenly there were many different versions of my film.”