Tiferet Talk

We discussed the many facets of Piercy's work, with an emphasis on The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems.

Deeply engaged with life on a multitude of levels, Piercy has advocated for human rights as a key player in many of the major political battles of our time and has written passionately about themes essential to the progress of humanity. Piercy is the author of eighteen volumes of poetry, including The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems With a Jewish Theme; several non-fiction books, including the critically acclaimed memoir, Sleeping with Cats; and seventeen novels, including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers, the National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women, and the classic Woman on the Edge of Time.

Piercy has been the recipient of four honorary doctorate degrees and has taught, lectured, and performed her work at over 400 universities around the world. As well, she has been a featured writer on Bill Moyers’ PBS Specials, Prairie Home Companion, Fresh Air, the Today Show, and many radio programs nationwide including Air America and Oprah & Friends. Her poems are read frequently on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.

Of Piercy's The Hunger Moon, The Christian Science Monitor states, "[These] selected poems deserve to be read over and over because they work together beautifully and demonstrate the poet's considerable talent and skill. They also remind readers why Marge Piercy is a literary icon whose work and career are unmatched."

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us on 10/22/12 at 7 PM EST for a talk with Dani Shapiro, bestselling memoirist and novelist. We'll be discussing Shapiro's exploration self and faith through the memoir Devotion, as well as other works.

In addition to Devotion, Shapiro is the author of the memoir Slow Motion, and five novels, including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, The New York Times Book Review, and The Los Angeles Times, and has been widely anthologized. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School and Wesleyan University, and she is co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. As well, she is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. 

Of Shapiro's Devotion, Jennifer Egan states, “I was on the verge of tears more than once in the course of Dani Shapiro’s impeccably structured spiritual odyssey. But Devotion’s biggest triumph is its voice: funny and unpretentious, concrete and earthy–appealing to skeptics and believers alike. This is a gripping, beautiful story.”

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us for a conversation with Ron Starbuck. Starbuck has been a contributing writer for Parabola Magazine, has had poetry published in Tiferet Journal and other journals and anthologies, and is the author of Wheels Turning Inward, a rich collection of over fifty poems that follow a poet's mythic and spiritual journey across the paths of many contemplative traditions. Starbuck has been deeply engaged in an Interfaith-Buddhist-Christian dialogue for many years and holds a lifelong interest in Christian mysticism, comparative religion, theology, and various forms of contemplative practice.  As well, Starbuck is the founder of Saint Julian Press, a nonprofit organization that will soon publish works that foster an interfaith and cross-cultural literary dialogue.

For more information, or to read Ron’s work, please see: http://ronstarbuck-poet.blogspot.com/ or http://saintjulianpress.com/index.html.

 

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us for a lively conversation  as our fabulous guest host R Jeffreys, of The Write Step, interviews Tifereteditor and blogtalk host Melissa Studdard and Tiferet Journal publisher and producer Donna Baier Stein. The topic of discussion will be the just published The Tiferet TalkInterviews book, a collection of the first year of Tiferet Talk interviews.

The Tiferet TalkInterviews book, introduced by Tiferet Journal publisher, Donna Baier Stein, contains interviews Studdard conducted with the following brilliant and eclectic bunch of writers: Robert Pinsky, Floyd Skloot, Lois P. Jones, Julia Cameron, Marc Allen, Edward Hirsch, Bernie Siegel, Arielle Ford, Jude Rittenhouse, Jeffrey Davis, Robin Rice, and Anthony Lawlor. 

 

To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us on July 30th at 7 PM EST for a conversation with the dazzling literary talent Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Divakaruni  is an award-winning author, poet, and teacher, whose works have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Russian and Japanese. She writes for both adults and children and covers many themes, including women, immigration, the South Asian experience, history, myth, magical realism and diversity. Two of her novels, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into films. Her short story collection, Arranged Marriage, won an American Book Award. Divakaruni teaches in the illustrious Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. Of her novel One Amazing Thing, Ha Jin states, "Ingeniously conceived and intelligently written, this novel is a fable for our time. The characters . . . vibrate with life whenever they begin to speak.”

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us live at 7 PM EST 6/24/2012 for a talk with Rasoul Shams, translator of Rumi: The Art of Loving. We're delighted to announce, as well, that Rasoul will be reading  from the poetry in both English and Persian. 

Rasoul first learned of Rumi’s poems in his Persian classes as a young boy growing up in Iran,and now the works of Rumi and other Persian poets have been his spiritual companions for over three decades. Having lived and studied in Iran, India, Japan and the USA, Rasoul's life and education are rooted in a multi-cultural, multi-language matrix. 

Rasoul founded the Rumi Poetry Club in 2007 (on the 800th anniversary of Rumi’s birth). Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the club celebrates the poetry of East and West through its monthly meetings, annual gatherings, website, and publications.

As well, Rasoul has published a number of essays in such magazines as The World and I, Interrelgious Insight, Pure Inspiration, Light of Consciousness, Kyoto Journal, The Himalayan Journal, Mandala, Persian Heritage, Sufi, and the Rumi Review. He is currently working on another anthology of Rumi’s poetry.

Rumi, a renowned Persian mystic poet of the thirteenth century, is currently one of the most widely-read poets in North America and Europe – thanks to the free-verse translations of his works that have made this poet’s voice and vision accessible to our generation.

Please join usas Melissa Studdard interviews renowned spiritual author John E. Welshons. Welshons is a prolific author as well as founder and president of Open Heart Seminars, an organization whose aim is to increase spiritual awareness and education. He is best known for his works One Soul, One Love, One Heart: The Sacred Path to Healing All Relationships (co-authored with Ram Dass) and When Prayers Aren't Answered: Opening the Heart and Quieting the Mind in Challenging Times (co-authored with Richard Carlson). An active and accomplished writer, this is not an interview to miss! 

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Join us for a dynamic conversation about poetry, translation, and teaching with Richard Jeffrey Newman. Newman is the author of the poetry collection The Silence Of Men; the translator of two masterpieces of 13th century Iranian poetry, Selec­tions from Saadi’s Gulis­tan and Selec­tions from Saadi’s Bus­tan, and translator of The Teller of Tales, a portion of the Shahnameh, the Persian national epic. He is also co-translator, with Professor John Moyne, of A Bird in the Gar­den of Angels, a selec­tion of work by Rumi.

As well, Newman serves as Per­sian Arts Festival’s Lit­er­ary Arts Direc­tor, co-curates the monthly Shab-e She’r (Night of Persian Poetry) at the Bowery Poetry Club, sits on the advi­sory boards of The Trans­la­tion Project and Jack­son Heights Poetry Fes­ti­val, and is a speaker with the New York Council for the Humanities.  

He is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College.

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us for a conversation about poetry, editing, and translation with Tony Barnstone. Barnstone is the recipient of many awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, and the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry. He is the author, editor, and translator of over a dozen books, including collections of poems and writings about poetry. His poetry collections are Impure, Sad Jazz: Sonnets, The Golem of Los Angeles, and Tongue of War, a collection of dramatic monologues set in the Pacific during the Second World War. Yusef Komunyakaa calls Barnstone's Impure "...a mantra of what is meant and what is dreamt."

Tiferet Journal has recently published a compilation of twelve of our best transcribed interviews. To purchase The Tiferet Talk Interviews book, please click here.

Please join us on 1/9/12 at 7 pm EST for a conversation about consciousness; the nature of existence; and healing the mind, body, and spirit. Our guest, Jason Shulman, is the founder of A Society of Souls training in Integrated Kabbalistic Healing, IM/personal Movement and the Work of Return. Shulman, who has been authorized to teach the Dharma as well, is on the faculties of the New York Open Center, the Esalen Institute, and the Omega Institute. He's also a member of the Professional Advisory Board of the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.Shulman is the author of The Instruction Manual for Receiving God and Kabbalistic Healing: a Path to an Awakened Soul.