Let's Talk Talking Books

Visual or physical disability need not be a barrier to pursuing the love of books. In a new partnership, the Jewish Braille Institute of America and Jewish Care's KC Shasha Centre have cooperated to launch an extraordinary range of work on tape by Jewish writers and on Jewish themes. In this session two authors, whose talking books are among the most popular, lead a discussion about the importance of talking books.

Alan Isler was born in London in 1934 and came to America as a young man. He taught English literature at the City University of New York for twenty-five years. His first novel, The Prince of West End Avenue, won the 1994 National Jewish Book Award and was one of five fiction finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His second novel, Kraven Images, was published in 1996. The Bacon Fancier: Four Tales appeared in 1997.

The novelist Bernice Rubens was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1928, the daughter of a Russian Jewish father. She read English at the University of Wales and taught English in Birmingham for two years before working in film as a freelance film director and scriptwriter. Her fourth novel, The Elected Member (1969), won the Booker Prize for Fiction. A Five-Year Sentence (1978) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. I, Dreyfus (1999), a re-working of the Dreyfus case in France at the end of the 19th century, was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction. Her latest book is The Sergeant's Tale (2003).