Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Geraldine Brooks Featured at Mandell JCC Jewish Book Festival Closing Event, May 9, 2012

The Mandell JCC Jewish Book Festival closes out its 19^th season with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Geraldine Brooks on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 7:30 pm in the Herbert Gilman Theater at the Mandell JCC, Zachs Campus, 335 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford, CT. Brooks, author of People of the Book, will be discussing her new novel, Caleb’s Crossing, and signing books.

Brooks has written several books, and is best known for her New York Times bestseller, People of the Book. Her most recent book, Caleb’s Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665. The novel is an attempt to fill the void in his historical record and an informed imagining of his remarkable journey. “Caleb’s Crossing could not be more enlightening and involving. Beautifully written from beginning to end, it reconfirms Geraldine Brooks’s reputation as one of our most supple and insightful ­novelists,” commented Jane Smiley in The New York Times.

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-born author and journalist. She won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City, where she later worked for The Wall Street Journal. Brooks was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Other works by Brooks include March (Penguin, 2006) which she received the Pulitzer Prize for, Year of Wonders (Penguin, 2002), Nine Parts of Desire (Anchor, 1995) and Foreign Correspondence.

The 2011-2012 Mandell JCC Book Festival is co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford, and made possible by these Mandell JCC Partners: Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Webster Bank, LAZ Parking, BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Brown Brothers Harriman, Macy’s, Marriott Residence Inn of Hartford, and Xerox. Support for the festival is provided by the Jewish Book Council, Let’s Go Arts, and the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.

Tickets to the Geraldine Brooks closing Jewish Book Festival event are $20 per person, and are on sale via mail, in person, fax, or online at the Mandell JCC Box Office, 860-231-6316, 860-233-0802 (fax), tickets@mandelljcc.org and at www.mandelljcc.org. For more information, contact the Member Services Center, 860-236-4571 or visit www.mandelljcc.org. For updates, follow the Mandell JCC on Facebook and Twitter.