[imc-education] From Grace Paley's Glad Day Books

[Leora]

   We would like to let you know our book, "Edges: O Israel, O 
Palestine”. The novel was chosen and edited by Grace Paley for her 
own imprint at Glad Day Books. "Edges" has also been selected to 
be featured at this years NWSA Conference in Oakland, California 
and was awarded a stipend from The PEN/Faulkner Foundation 
National Writer in Schools.

   Please do let us know if you like to schedule the author for an 
event. We would love to be included in your community.
  Best,

 Grace Paley, Robert Nichols, Glad Day Books





Publicity Release:
"EDGES, O Israel O Palestine"
 by Leora Skolkin-Smith
 Glad Day Books
 ISBN  1-930180-14-4
 Contact: skolkin at nyc.rr.com
Represented by Russell and Volkening Literary Agency
"EDGES: O Israel O Palestine" was selected by Grace Paley and 
edited for "Glad Day Books".


              "Edges" is set in a pre-1967 Israel, during the Cold 
War.  Characters are drawn from Israel’s long-forgotten past, 
members of the 1940’s Haganah and Jewish underground who find 
themselves displaced amidst the chaotic and complex tensions of an 
Israel just beginning to modernize and expand.

              We are very pleased to announce that Edges" has been 
awarded a stipend from the    PEN/Faulkner Foundation's 
Writers-in-the-Schools.


     "Edges" is a dark and penetrating look at pre-1967 Israel and 
Palestine through the eyes of a 14 year old Liana Bialik.   After 
her American father's suicide, Liana's Jerusalem-born mother 
decides to take Liana and her sister back to her homeland, where 
her family had lived for four generations. Once they get to Israel 
Liana, who feels overwhelmed and suffocated by her mother, begins 
to detach herself from her. She embarks on a mission of 
self-discovery to learn why her mother does not speak about her 
father and why he took his own life. Edges is well-written, 
powerful in both imagery and subject matter..."
         -Jewish Book World, Spring 2006
Vol. 24, Number 1

  Grace Paley writes: "EDGES takes the reader to an Israel before 
high walls formed a border, when, instead, metal wires hung "like 
hosiery lines" across the land.  Liana Barish is fourteen years 
old when the suicide of her American father forces her mother, 
mourning, in despair back to her family--to Jerusalem where she 
grew up. For Liana it is the place where the powerful 
interdependence of mother and daughter--physical and 
spiritual--ends. It is the place of her sexual awakening."

        Katharine Weber, book critic and author of TRIANGLE,
THE LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSIC LESSON, and OBJECTS IN
MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR raves: "Edges is an elegant and 
moving novel. Leora Skolkin-Smith has that rare gift of the writer 
who can convey the sensibility — the essence of a place and its 
people — with precision and clarity. A provocative debut."



  Caroline Leavitt,  columnist at "The Boston Globe" and author of 
GIRLS IN TROUBLE writes: "Where, and how and to whom do we really 
belong? Skolkin's brilliant debut novel is a hypnotic meditation 
on the ever-changing boundaries of love and need. A coming of age 
story of the bond between a young American and her powerful 
mother, etched in a wartime Mideast as shifting and dangerous and 
mysterious as the Israeli desert."

              "EDGES" is a novel "told with restraint and poetic 
precision," Robert Whitcomb at "The Providence Journal" has 
written "...memorable (for the)  the sense of place that Ms. 
Skolkin-Smith has achieved -- the sunny and scary Jerusalem and 
countryside -- and the hope, love, hate and fatalism of the 
groups, Palestinian and Israeli, living amongst and apart from 
each other..."

           Oscar Hijuelos, author of the  Pulitzer-prize winning 
novel,  THE MAMBO KINGS SING SONGS OF LOVE  has called EDGES "An 
elegantly written,  quite moving novel that has a lot to say about 
love, identity, history and the meaning of nationality. The book 
is worth reading alone for its superb language, but it is gripping 
and unforgettable as well in its story telling and evocation of 
place and emotions. It is a wonderful novel by an author with a 
quite accomplished voice and style, one well deserving a wide and 
receptive audience"

EDGES was nominated for the 2006 PEN/Faulkner Award and The 
PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award by Grace Paley.

Awarded a Stipend from the Pen/Faulkner Foundation

A National Women Studies Association Conference Selection

“Bloomsbury Review” Pick, 2006:  “Favorite Books of the Last 25 
Years”

A Jewish Book Council Selection, 2005

Featured at The Virginia Festival of the Book, 2006.

Ms. Skolkin-Smith has received grants from The New York State 
Council on the Arts, The Department of Cultural affairs, and 
P.E.N. American Center.  She was awarded a Teaching Fellowship for 
graduate work at Sarah Lawrence College where she holds a BA and 
MFA in writing.


   EDGES is now available from: Ingram Distributors, Baker and 
Taylor
   website:  http://www.leoraskolkinsmith.com

"Edges: O Israel, O  Palestine" is also available at: 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1930180144/