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WHY DOES BRAM PRESSER WRITE? IG: @iaminstabram Twitter: @BramPresser Facebook: @BramPresserAuthor Web: brampresser.com & a book for ants Publications: The Book of Dirt Noè Welcome to Why Write, a super short podcast that asks writers just that, why they write. Hi, I'm Noè Harsel, a writer and Chair of Writers Victoria, and I'm excited to chat to a diverse group of writers and simply ask, why write? I'm glad you're here with me. Today I have Bram Presser. Bram is a lapsed criminal lawyer and academic and has been a cartoon character twice. He's also a musician and an internationally and nationally award winning Australian writer, whose best-selling first novel, The Book of Dirt went on to receive the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Fiction, New Writing and the People's Choice Award, as well as the Voss Award and the National Jewish Book Award in America for Debut Fiction. Why Write is a Writers Victoria podcast. All programs and information about becoming a member with us at writers Victoria is available at writersvictoria.org.au We hope you enjoyed Why Write and if you did, please tell your friends and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Why Write was recorded at Brand Music and engineered by Michael Burrows. Original Music by Brand Music.
FIVE-HUNDRED EPISODES of The Virtual Memories Show?! Let's celebrate this milestone episode with tributes, remembrances, jokes, congrats, non-sequiturs, and a couple of songs (!) from nearly 100 of my past guests, including Maria Alexander, Jonathan Ames, Glen Baxter, Jonathan Baylis, Zoe Beloff, Walter Bernard, Sven Birkerts, Charles Blackstone, RO Blechman, Phlip Boehm, MK Brown, Dan Cafaro, David Carr, Kyle Cassidy, Howard Chaykin, Joe Ciardiello, Gary Clark, John Crowley, Ellen Datlow, Paul Di Filippo, Joan Marans Dim, Liza Donnelly, Bob Eckstein, Scott Edelman, Barbara Epler, Glynnis Fawkes, Aaron Finkelstein, Mary Fleener, Shary Flenniken, Josh Alan Friedman, Kipp Friedman, Michael Gerber, Mort Gerberg, ES Glenn, Sophia Glock, Paul Gravett, Tom Hart, Dean Haspiel, Jennifer Hayden, Glenn Head, Ron Hogan, Kevin Huizenga, Jonathan Hyman, Andrew Jamieson, Ian Kelley, Jonah Kinigstein, Kathe Koja, Ken Krimstein, Anita Kunz, Peter Kuper, Glenn Kurtz, Kate Lacour, Roger Langridge, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, John Leland, David Leopold, Sara Lippmann, David Lloyd, Whitney Matheson, Patrick McDonnell, Dave McKean, Scott Meslow, Barbara Nessim, Jeff Nunokawa, Jim Ottaviani, Celia Paul, Woodrow Phoenix, Darryl Pinckney, Weng Pixin, Eddy Portnoy, Virginia Postrel, Bram Presser, AL Price, Dawn Raffel, Boaz Roth, Hugh Ryan, Dmitry Samarov, Frank Santoro, JJ Sedelmaier, Nadine Sergejeff, Michael Shaw, R Sikoryak, Jen Silverman, Posy Simmonds, Vanessa Sinclair, David Small, Sebastian Smee, Ed Sorel, James Sturm, Mike Tisserand, Tom Tomorrow, Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, Kriota Willberg, Warren Woodfin, Jim Woodring, and Claudia Young. Plus, we look at back with segments from the guests we've lost over the years: Anthea Bell, Harold Bloom, Bruce Jay Friedman, Milton Glaser, Clive James, JD McClatchy, DG Myers, Tom Spurgeon, and Ed Ward. Here's to the next 500 shows! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal
The Stuph File Program Featuring comedian Gilbert Gottfried; John Thibault, author of How to Change a Law: A Do it Yourself Guide for the Average Person; & Stuart Nulman with Book Banter Download We remember comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who recently passed away. We share an interview from 1994 when he performed in Montreal at Just For Laughs. John Thibault, author of How to Change a Law: A Do it Yourself Guide for the Average Person talks about old, antiquated laws that are on the books and how the general public can do their part to change them. Stuart Nulman with another edition of Book Banter. This week's reviewed title is The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan (HarperCollins, $34.99). You can also read Stuart's reviews in The Montreal Times. (In honour of Holocaust Remembrance Day titles also mentioned were The Book Of Dirt by Bram Presser & Left To The Mercy Of A Rude Stream by Stan Goldman. You can hear interviews via Audea with Bram Presser and Stan Goldman under the heading of A Punk Rocker Searches For His Grandparents' Holocaust Roots & Narrowly Avoiding Death During The Holocaust. Now you can listen to selected items from The Stuph File Program on the new audio service, Audea. A great way to keep up with many of the interviews from the show and take a trip down memory lane to when this show began back in 2009, with over 650 selections to choose from! This week's guest slate is presented by Aalia Adam, the anchor/host of Global News Weekend at Global Toronto.
Reading Polish Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob and Marisa Fazio's novella Piazza Garibaldi with writers Amanda Lohrey and Bram Presser; and novelist and essayist Ann Patchett on These Precious Days and the bookshelf that shaped her
Beyond The Zero Season 1 Episode 4 brampresser.com Gateway Book I am The Cheese - Robert Cormier Currently Reading The Last Guest - J.P. Pomare The Absolute Book - Elizabeth Knox Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch - Rivka Galchen The Promise - Damon Galgut Grimmish - Michael Winkler Klara And The Sun - Ishiguro Smokehouse - Melissa Manning Book of the year so far The Employees - Olga Ravn Top 10 (almost) 1.) I am The Cheese - Robert Cormier 2.) The Trial - Franz Kafka 3.) The Tenant - Roland Topor 4.) Book of Daniel - E.L. Doctorow 5.) Too Loud a Solitude - Bohumil Hrabal 6.) Trieste daša drndić 7.) This Blinding Absence of Light - Tahar Ben Jelloun 8.) Binu and the Great Wall - Su Tong 9.) The Ogre - Michel Tournier 10.) Censoring an Iranian Love Story - Shahriar Mandanipour 11.) The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman - Angela Hoffman 12.) The Infatuations Javier Marias Honorable mentions Andre Brink - A Dry White Season I.J Singer - The Brothers Ashkenazi Gerard Donovan - Schopenhauer's Telescope Jesse Ball - The Curfew, The census, Silence Once Begun.
Join us in celebrating three years of the Final Draft podcast!We've come a long way and today we're looking back to the beginning. Bram Presser is the author of the award winning The Book of Dirt. He is also the first guest to grace our little podcast way back when it began. Listen back to a remastered version of that first interview along with exclusive audio of Andrew and Bram discussing the incredible success of The Book of Dirt winning the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Novelist Bram Presser and comparative literature academic Rebecca Suter join Kate and Cassie to talk about Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, Klara and the Sun, in light of all his other novels. And yes, the quality of light, shining down on this Artificial Friend - Robot Girl - is one of the many things at stake in this bookish discussion
The breakout literary sensation of 2021, THE PERFORMANCE is a tightly woven examination of women's inner lives that is enthralling, profound and deeply human.
In the first episode of Burgers, Beers and Books, Ben Hobson and Bram Presser get deep about Bram's favourite book.
This episode I am joined by lapsed lawyer, recovering academic, semi-reformed punk rocker, and now writer and stay-at-home dad, Bram Presser. Bram's writing has appeared in Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing, The Sleepers Almanac and Higher Arc. His 2017 debut novel, The Book of Dirt, won the 2018 Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction in the US National Jewish Book Awards, the 2018 Voss Literary Prize and three awards in the 2018 NSW Premier's Literary Awards: the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and The People's Choice Award. We talk about our love of browsing bookstores, Bram's journey to writing a novel, writing a personal history as fiction and of course, we pair some delicious things to some fabulous books! The pairings: The Door by Magda Szabo A busy young writer struggling to cope with domestic chores, hires a housekeeper recommended by a friend. The housekeeper's reputation is one built on dependable efficiency, though she is something of an oddity. Stubborn, foul-mouthed and with a flagrant disregard for her employer's opinions she may even be crazy. She allows no-one to set foot inside her house; she masks herself with a veil and is equally guarded about her personal life. And yet Emerence is revered as much as she is feared. As the story progresses her energy and passion to help becomes clear, extinguishing any doubts arising out of her bizarre behaviour. A stylishly told tale which recounts a strange relationship built up over 20 years between a writer and her housekeeper. After an unpromising and caustic start benign feelings develop and ultimately the writer benefits from what becomes an inseparable relationship. Simultaneously we learn Emerence's tragic past which is revealed in snapshots throughout the book. Bram called this the most beautiful book he has ever read, a modern classic, and a beautiful meditation on dignity and how we imagine people to be. To pair with the interesting and complex character of Emerence he suggests a classic Borscht with sour cream and a traditional Pilsner Urquell. The Curfew by Jesse Ball William and Molly lead a life of small pleasures, riddles at the kitchen table, and games of string and orange peels. All around them a city rages with war. When the uprising began, William's wife was taken, leaving him alone with their young daughter. They keep their heads down and try to remain unnoticed as police patrol the streets, enforcing a curfew and arresting citizens. But when an old friend seeks William out, claiming to know what happened to his wife, William must risk everything. He ventures out after dark, and young Molly is left to play, reconstructing his dangerous voyage, his past, and their future. Bram called Jesse Ball the most exciting writer out of America right now and highly recommends this totalitarian dystopia with its surrealist and strangely beautiful experimental writing. The perfect pairing for Bram is a Corpse Reviver, made with absinthe, gin, cointreau, lillet and lemon juice ... ooooof! It is weird, subtle, warm, sweetly discombobulating with a kick!
The Australian Classics Book Club is a monthly exploration of Australian writing; looking back over the forgotten, the classic, the much discussed and underappreciated in Australian Letters.On Acland St, in Melbourne’s beach side suburb of St Kilda sits a Cafe named Scheherazade. Martin is a journalist there to write a story on the cafe’s founders Avram and Masha Zeleznikow. No sooner has he begun than Martin knows that this will be no ordinary column. As voices fill the air of Scheherazade on a nightly basis, Martin comes to bear witness to the history that had seen so many flee their homes in Europe and converge on Melbourne for a new beginning and a chance to heal.
How do we write trauma unflinchingly yet ethically? What is literature’s role in witnessing, archiving and healing deep personal and societal wounds? In this session Eda Gunaydin, Bram Presser, Maria Tumarkin and Anders Villani delve into the complexities of authentically rendering trauma on the page. -- -- Full artist bios here: https://2019.digitalwritersfestival.com/event/literature-and-trauma/ Download the transcript of the podcast here: https://2019.digitalwritersfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/DWF19-LITERATURE-AND-TRAUMA.docx Check out the full festival program here: https://2019.digitalwritersfestival.com/
The guest is Bram Presser, multi-award winning author, lawyer, and punk rocker. His book is The Book of Dirt which we talk a lot about. We also talk a lot about writing to preserve family histories, the fallibility of memory and how it influences story telling, the 'Museum of the Extinct Race', pop novelists hijacking narratives around the Holocaust, and many other things.
Chloe Hooper, Bram Presser and Jock Serong explore the creative space between fact and fiction. This session was recorded at the 2019 Newcastle Writers Festival and is hosted by Geordie Williamson.
Tradition, tradition! We sit down with legendary actress Jackie Hoffman, who plays Yenta in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ in Yiddish, and Motl Didner, the Folksbiene's associate artistic director. Hoffman tells us about learning her lines in Yiddish and her favorite role of all time. Didner teaches us a few key phrases in Yiddish We also chat with Australian punk rocker-turned-novelist Bram Presser, who wrote The Book of Dirt which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction. He tells us about discovering the real story of his Holocaust survivor grandfather's wartime years, which shapes the book, as well as his Yiddish punk background with the band Yidcore. We’re heading to Chicago! We'll be at the Logan Square Auditorium Wednesday, June 26 at 7 p.m. with special guest Blair Braverman, who recently became the second Jewish woman to complete the Iditarod. Presented with Hadassah Chicago-North Shore. Get your tickets here. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bram Presser drops by to read from The Book of Dirt and we chat about many things including the Holocaust, the origins of his novel, the research he’s done, on the interplay between fact and fiction, the motif of dirt and his many golems, Czech folklore, his works in progress, and lots more. Find out more about Bram at: https://brampresser.com/the-book-of-dirt/ We ran out of time before I could ask Bram whether his Jewish punk rock band Yidcore would be getting back together, but it turns out that they are, at The Festival of Jewish Arts & Music on the 8th of Sept. Find out more here: https://www.melbournerecital.com.au/events/2019/yidcore/
Katherine googles the most annoying questions you can ask authors and she and Kate go through each question, rating how irritating they find it. One of the most contentious is money and sales… No surprises there. Then Katherine talks Bram Presser, author of The Book of Dirt about documentary fiction, hommus and Jewish punk rock. Check out show notes for this episode on our website www.thefirsttimepodcast.com or get in touch via Twitter or Instagram @thefirsttimepod. Don't forget you can support us and the making of Season Two via our Patreon page https://www.patreon.com/user/overview?u=14470635! Thanks so much.
What sort of person breaks into Auschwitz? An author -- and semi-reformed punk rocker, recovering academic and occasional criminal lawyer -- in search of answers. Bram Presser joins the show to talk about his award-winning debut novel The Book of Dirt, a memoir-fiction hybrid about his family's experience in the Shoah. We get into the myths of how his grandfather survived the concentration camps and what they meant for his family and his book, the years of detective work (and the lucky breaks) researching his grandparents' stories and records and the limits of knowing anyone else's life, the exceptionalist vibe of Czech Jews, the stories he was afraid to learn and the heroism that redeemed his great-grandmother and her family, and how Bram avoided Holocaust cliches while giving agency, dignity and social dynamics to the prisoners in the camps. We also get into Bram's anxiety about feedback from his mentor Dasa Drndic, the value of documentary fiction, the aspects of his other careers that supported his ability to write The Book of Dirt, that Auschwitz break-in, and why Talmudkommando would have been a better name for his Jewish punk band than Yidcore. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal
American author Kristen Roupenian's book of short stories including the New Yorker story, Cat Woman, that went viral, Puberty Blues author Gabrielle Carey on Australian young adult writer Ivan Southall and debut novelists Bram Presser and Katherine Collette share their juvenilia.
Bram Presser describes himself as a Scruffy scrivener Semi-reformed punk rocker Recovering academic Occasional criminal lawyer Two-time cartoon character His book The Book of Dirt, a book of love and anger, winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Awards Goldberg Prize for debut fiction, is a very special book that traces the experiences of Bram’s grandparents through the Holocaust. A powerful novel that will alter you once you’ve read it.
The Book of Dirt – Bram Presser – Text Publishing Company (Australia) – Paperback – 9781925240269 – 325 pages – $15.95 – September 11, 2018 – ebook versions available at lower prices Personal and family history for most contemporary Jews is frequently fraught. Most of us have relatives who disappeared without a trace, except for scattered […]
In an old fashioned debate, six Australian authors battle out the proposition 'write what you know': Mark Brandi, Claire Coleman, Bram Presser, Jane Rawson, Graeme Simsion and Michelle Aung Thin.
This week on we’re talking with best-selling Australian author Bram Presser. His debut novel, The Book of Dirt, is a tale of love and survival in the time of the holocaust. A deeply personal project, it interweaves fiction and non-fic, myth and lore as the author goes in search of his ancestor’s stories. Contributors: Alex Holmes Bram Presser Ruth Gaukrodger Books mentioned: The Book of Dirt by Bram Presser The Governesses by Anna Serre Census by Jesse Ball Follow us on Twitter.com/metrobookchat Facebook.com/metrobookchat Tinyurl.com/metroentale
Bram Presser, the mind behind the Jewish band Yidcore, is now exploring a new avenue of his creativity: his writing. His debut novel, "The Book of Dirt" has reached critical acclaim in Australia, and is now coming to the US. Hear all about his life as a punk rocker where Hasidim, secular Jews, and skinheads would come together to watch his shows. And hear about the unique process he went through to create his novel. Enjoy!
Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.Today's episode features Bram Presser and his award winning debut The Book of Dirt.The Book of Dirt takes us to Prague on the eve of war where Jakub Rand has newly arrived to begin his life. As the city is occupied by the invading Nazi army Jakub must protect himself and those he loves. The story explores Bram’s grandparents tale of survival, and parallels this with his own search for information on the history his grandfather spoke so little of.
In an old fashioned debate, six Australian authors battle out the proposition 'write what you know': Mark Brandi, Claire Coleman, Bram Presser, Jane Rawson, Graeme Simsion and Michelle Aung Thin.
Bram Presser's 'The Book of Dirt' delves into Jewish tradition and the struggle of assimilating the past.'The Blood within the Stone' is the first book in the Wraith Cycle of mind control and power at play by T R Thompson.
Bram Presser discusses his debut novel The Book of Dirt at the 2017 Shalom Sydney Jewish Writers Festival. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.