Tammar Stein
Local
Tammar Stein is the author of more than a dozen books for children including The Six-Day Hero, a middle grade novel about the Six Day War that was a Junior Library Guild Selection, a PJ Our Way Selection, and a Sydney Taylor Award Honor Book. Her follow up novel, Beni’s War, won the Middle East Book Award and received a starred review from School Library Journal. Her books have been named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, a Virginia Reader's Choice, a Texas high school summer reading book, and a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age. Tammar has lived on four continents and six countries. Her books have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and Ukrainian.
Session 1
The Quiet Silencing of Jewish Fiction Writers in American Publishing Today
As a published children's author with more than twenty years of experience in publishing, Tammar can attest there has been a significant chill in the publishing world towards works about Jewish and Israeli topics and even non-Jewish titles simply written by openly Jewish and Israeli authors. This session will explain the behind-the-scenes situation in mainstream American publishing that drives book sales around the world, the process of how a book is selected and the publishing time-line that helps mask this troubling trend. This session will also explore what readers can do to support Jewish authors and titles.
Session 2
The road to publishing a children's book
Veteran children's author Tammar will discuss her career as an award-winning writer of more than a dozen books for children of all ages. From idea to final product, some of Tammar's books have taken 5 years and some 3 months. Learn about the stories behind the stories she's told, inspired by her parents' experiences in 1960s and 1970s Israel and well as her personal experiences as a young child in Israel. The session will explore writing stories you might want to share and the first steps needed to take your story from an idea to a book.