Our Federation is thrilled to announce its newest program, People of the Book, an author lecture series featuring eight dynamic Jewish authors who will visit our community to discuss their recently published books. The series, presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Council, will feature six programs on a variety of topics that are sure to delight, educate and intrigue audiences.

You can either buy individual tickets for each lecture or a Page Turner Pass for $72 which will provide you access to all six events at a reduced cost. Click the PAGE TURNER button to purchase the entire author series. Individual event tickets can be purchased below the author bios below.

December 5, 2019 • 7:00 PM • $10

Beatrice Friedman Theater, 582 McIntosh Rd, Sarasota

Marra B. Gad, author of The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed Race Jewish Girl, and Angela Himsel, author of A River Could Be a Tree, will present a discussion on Jewish identity based upon their memoirs each related to family, love, and faith.

Riverview Performing Arts Center, 1 Ram Way, Sarasota, 34231

Renowned star of Broadway and London’s West End stages, Grammy-nominated artist and author Alexandra Silber will blend musical stylings with spoken words from her books in a cabaret-style performance featuring songs from Broadway and more. Silber is the author of After Anatevka, which picks up where the story told in Fiddler on the Roof ends, and her newest book, White Hot Grief Parade, her memoir about the loss of her beloved father and the restorative power of family and friendship. She is currently starring as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at The Olney Theater outside Washington, D.C.

January 29, 2020 • 10:30 pm • $10 

Beatrice Friedman Theater, 582 McIntosh Rd, Sarasota, 34232

S. Perry Brickman, author of Extracted: Unmasking Rampant Anti-Semitism in America’s Higher Education, is a retired oral surgeon, investigative journalist, and former president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. For a half century, Brickman harbored a deep and personally painful secret; in September 2006, he uncovered documents that strongly suggested that he, and many others, had been failed out of Emory’s dental school because they were Jewish.

February 13, 2020 • 7:00 pm • $18 

Beatrice Friedman Theater, 582 McIntosh Rd, Sarasota, 34232

Ariel Burger first met Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel at age 15.  They studied and taught together.  Burger’s book Witness chronicles the intimate conversations between these two men over decades. Witness takes the reader into Wiesel’s classroom, where the art of listening and storytelling conspire to keep memory alive. Burger is a writer, artist, teacher, and rabbi whose work combines spirituality, creativity and strategies for social change.

March 8, 2020 • 7:00 pm • $10

Beatrice Friedman Theater, 582 McIntosh Rd, Sarasota, 34232

Giraffes on Horseback Salad was a Marx Brothers film, written by modern art icon Salvador Dali. Rejected by MGM, the script was thought lost forever.  But author Josh Frank found it and, with comedian Tim Heideck and Spanish comics creator Manuela Pertega, recreated the film as a graphic novel in all its gorgeous, full-color, cinematic, surreal glory. Frank’s entertaining, interactive presentation includes clips from your favorite Marx Brothers films, music and more.

Beatrice Friedman Theater, 582 McIntosh Rd, Sarasota, 34232

Jack Fairweather and Sarah Rose will present a panel discussion on some of the heroes of the resistance during World War II.

Fairweather’s book, The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz, tells the incredible true story of a Polish resistance fighter’s infiltrations of Auschwitz to sabotage the camp from within and his death defying attempt to warn the Allies about the Nazis’ plans for a “Final Solution” before it was too late. The author is a graduate of Oxford University and has been a correspondent for the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. His reporting while an embedded reporter during the Iraq invasion won him the British Press Award (the British equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize).

Sarah Rose has written for the Wall Street Journal, Outside The Saturday Evening Post, and Men’s Journal. In 2014, she was awarded a Lowell Thomas Prize in Travel Writing.  Rose’s book, D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II, is the dramatic untold story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory. These women destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, and gathered crucial intelligence.

To purchase tickets over the phone, please call 1.888.718.4253, Option 1.