Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 7:30 pm: Erik Larson with David Kipen

Erik Larson’s books, which include Devil In The White City, and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, take a moment in our American experience and turn that moment into the most riveting and thrilling story imaginable. Each of his books reads like a thriller, set against a grand tableau, where we get to know the players intimately. And sometimes it’s a challenge to remember that Erik Larson’s books are nonfiction– because truth is always so much stranger than anything we could make up.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012, 7:30 pm: Buddy Elias, Anne Frank’s first cousin, with Jonathan Kirsch on new Frank family documents

The Diary of Anne Frank has given insight to three generations around the world, to tens of millions of readers, about what people in hiding go through, the fear and frustration they suffer, the hunger for the outside world, the extent to which virtual prisoners will go to survive. That Anne Frank was just a child when she wrote it contributes to its profound nature; her entries about her adolescent ups and downs and her magnificent optimism make her diary one of the most valuable,…

Thursday, May 10, 2012, 7:30 pm: Jeffrey Lewis on Berlin, Reclamation and Identity

Berlin, perhaps more than any other city in our collective imagination, has lived through so many identities, and has morphed from one version of itself into another, several times, over the course of just a few generations. Berlin is a city of extremes—and its past 60 years haunts us even as its present delights and absorbs us.

Thursday, April 26, 2012, 7:30 pm: Arab Israeli author Sayed Kashua with Arieh Saposnik

Writers Bloc co-sponsors this program with thanks to the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA and UCLA’s Department of Comparative Literature. We invite you to participate in a wonderful cultural event featuring Arab Israeli author, satirist and television comedy writer Sayed Kashua, in conversation with UCLA Professor Arieh Saposnik.