Monday, October 27, 2025
6:00 pm
Umrath Lounge
On Monday, October 27th at 6:00 p.m., Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES) at Washington University in St. Louis will host award-winning writer Ayelet Tsabari for a reading and discussion of her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted (HarperCollins, 2024).
Tsabari will introduce her novel, which was the winner of the 2024 National Jewish Book. Building on the success of her memoir The Art of Leaving and her story collection The Best Place on Earth, Tsabari’s novel explores the experiences of Yemini immigrants in Israel from its founding through the backlash to the Oslo Peace Accords. These episodes in Israeli politics and culture continue to reverberate today.
Tsabari will also speak about growing up Yemeni in Israel, about re-finding and reclaiming that identity through writing and through extensive research into Yemeni culture and traditions. She will share audio and images from her research into the Yemeni women’s songs that are a leitmotiv in the novel, and speak of some of the unique challenges she has faced writing about Israel in English, her second language. This lecture will explore the many ways in which a writer’s cultural background, mother tongue, and origins influence and inform her writing, in terms of both content and style.
The event is free and open to the public and will be held in Umrath Lounge on the Danforth campus of Washington University in St. Louis. A reception will begin at 5:30 p.m., followed by the main program at 6:00 p.m.
