Chana Bloch, Christina García + Jane Hirshfield

DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Chana Bloch, Christina García, and Jane Hirshfield to the store to discuss their contributions to Extraordianry Rendition: American Writers on Palestine on Sunday, May 22nd 3pm.

Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine brings together the work of sixty-five prominent writers to examine America’s culpability in the denial of human rights and dignity to Palestinians in Israel/Palestine and beyond.

The anthology includes pieces by writers such as Chana Bloch, Christina García, Jane Hirshfield, Colum McCann, Roger Reeves, George Saunders and Alice Walker. In writing that is always clear, and often startlingly beautiful, they cover a range of issues including the erasure and reconstruction of histories, the examination of identity, the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of speaking out as artists, the conditions of occupation, and the potential for activism. They also explore the way U.S. foreign policy towards Palestine regularly mirrors the harsh realities faced by many of America’s own minorities. The anthology as a whole counters the dehumanizing narrative about Palestine that has taken hold in the United States, often supported by mainstream news organizations, and makes a significant contribution toward an understanding of the ways people of conscience in general, and writers in particular, can take on one of the most pressing political questions of our time.

Chana Bloch’s Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015 includes selections from her four earlier collections, The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, and Blood Honey, as well as new work. Bloch is co-translator of the biblical Song of Songs and of Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch. She has won two Pushcart Prizes, two NEA fellowships, the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Bloch is Professor Emerita of English at Mills College.

Cristina García is the author of six novels, two anthologies, works for young readers, and a collection of poetry. Her latest book, King of Cuba, is a darkly comic portrait of Fidel Castro. García’s work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into fourteen languages. She has taught at universities nationwide and recently moved to the Bay Area.

Jane Hirshfield’s most recent, eighth poetry collection is The Beauty, published along with Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. Her honors include The California Book Award, the Poetry Center Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and NEA, and finalist selection for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, TLS, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and eight editions of The Best American Poetry. She is a current chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and this year’s Mohr Visiting Poet at Stanford.