This event will be taking place virtually via Zoom. Click here to sign up and receive the Zoom link.

Jews became funny when they went into exile. Not out of choice, but out of creative survival. How else were Jews supposed to process the absurdity of being the “Chosen People,” chosen to live in Diaspora? As part of the new LABA fellowship at the JCC East Bay in Berkeley, ten artists are spending the year exploring humor and creativity in the Jewish experience. On April 12, four artists – Marika Brussel, Caroline Kessler, Dan Schifrin and Sarah Stone – will discuss the intersection of humor and creativity as part of the StoryForward series “Exile at Home.” Co-presented by the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, Jewish Community Library, and JewishLIVE. Moderated by Dan Schifrin.

Marika Brussel is a choreographer working in the ballet genre. Informed by her background as a fiction writer, she tells contemporary stories through ballet,  showing our inter-connectedness and equity as humans, from country to country, class to class, and generation to generation,  bringing ballet into the 21st Century.  From Shadows: A ballet about homelessness, premiered in October 2017, to sold out audiences in San Francisco. Her ballet, Still Time For Impossible, looked at the climate crisis. Her ballets have been commissioned by ARC Dance, Columbia Repertory Ballet, Bay Pointe Ballet, Emote Dance Theater, Berkeley Ballet Theater, and Ballet Theater of New Mexico. Her awards include a Fleishhacker Opportunity Grant and a grant from The Classical Girl. Marika was a 2019 recipient of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Fellowship in Choreography.

Caroline Kessler is a poet, editor, and facilitator currently based in Oakland/on Chochenyo Ohlone land. She is co-creator of The 18 Somethings Project, a virtual writing adventure, and the author of Ritual in Blue (Sutra Press, 2018). Her work has been published in The McNeese Review, Superstition Review, Letters, Rivet, and elsewhere. More at carokess.com/.

A former columnist for both New York Jewish Week and the j: Jewish Newsweekly of Northern California, Dan Schifrin has taught creative writing at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, and served as writer-in-residence at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. He is the author, among other things, of the play “Sweet and Sour;” the one-man show “String Theory”; and a forthcoming memoir about fatherhood and science fiction. As part of a LABA Fellowship at the JCC of the East Bay, Dan is writing a play about medieval Jewish Spain and its influence on twenty-first century America. His essays and stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and McSweeneys, and he is the winner of the 2016 Wilner Award for Short Fiction from San Francisco State University. He recently founded StoryForward, which provides programming around the intersection of story and community. More at danschifrin.com.

Sarah Stone is the author of the novels The True Sources of the Nile and Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th Annual Northern California Book Awards. She is also the co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, StoryQuarterly, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, and A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft, among other places. She has written for and taught on Korean television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute. She now teaches creative writing both privately and online for Stanford Continuing Studies. More at www.sarahstoneauthor.com.