Writer Ayelet Tsabari just awarded the prestigious Sami Rohr Prize for her debut short story collection, 'The Best Place on Earth.' She tells host Ilene Prusher that when she got the call, she was sure was being told she was the runner-up.The Israeli-born, Canada-based author joins host Ilene Prusher to talk about themes of immigration and marginalization, peace hopes turned to intifada realities, her year of reading only writers of color, and her own journey to writing in an adopted language - English.

At the age of 25, Shelly Oria decided to leave Israel and move to New York. When she decided to enroll in a creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, she hadn't considered what it would mean to have to write in English.At first, she was writing in Hebrew and translating everything into English. Finally, she took the leap into writing in English. She joins host Ilene Prusher in the studio to discuss her first collection of short stories, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, which has been received to critical acclaim.

Born in Bnei Brak and raised in an ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist family, Tuvia Tenenbom left the Haredi community and moved to America to study science and the arts.After the success of his book, I Sleep in Hitler's Room, his publisher asked him to revisit the country of his youth and document his journey. The result is a very unorthodox look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of the international community – Europe in particular – in trying to “catch the Jew” in acts of wrongdoing small and large.In Catch the Jew!, Tenenbom satirically skewers the right, the left, the centrists, the Jews, Arabs, the Americans, the Europeans, and just about everyone in between. He joins host Ilene Prusher in the studio for an appropriately eccentric interview.

Professor Iris Bruce, one of the world’s leading experts on Franz Kafka, comes to Israel as a guest of the Kafka After Kafka conference at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva. Her latest literary kick: comparing Kafka with Israeli-Arab writer Sayed Kashua.

British writer Saul Wordsworth created the sketch of a quirky character – on Twitter. He was gaining such a following and becoming so human that Wordsworth decided to write a book about him. The result is his first novel, 'Alan Stoob: Nazi Hunter,' a humorous debut that pokes fun at a sensitive subject that is rarely the subject of satire. Wordsworth joins us from London to talk about the book.

The writer of The UnAmericans, a prize-winning short story collection, Molly Antopol is up for the Sami Rohr Jewish Literature prize. She joins host Ilene Prusher on the line from California.

Mark Russ Federman studied English literature in college, went to law school at Georgetown University, and practised law for 8 or 9 years. Then he decided to ditch the bar for the fish counter, where he had to keep customers happy with the best smoked fish and practice the art of the New York schmooze. After 30 year in the business, he handed it over to the next generation and embarked on a book, Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built. Readers are going as wild for his writing as they used to for his whitefish. He joins host Ilene Prusher in the TLV1 studio to talk about why.

Ann Hood, author of ten novels including The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, and most recently, An Italian Wife, talks to host Ilene Prusher about writing as healing, and describes the healthy regimen that works for her: Two hours of writing, two hours of reading, two hours of knitting.

Almog Behar, an Israeli poet and novelist, joins host Ilene Prusher in the TLV1 studio to talk about his work and the release of Shteim-Ithneen (‘Two’), an anthology of contemporary young poets in both Hebrew and Arabic – a six-year labor of love that will be launched at the Jerusalem International Book Fair.

Dorit Rabinyan, one of guests of next week’s Jerusalem International Book Fair, joins host Ilene Prusher in the TLV1 studio to discuss her latest novel, Borderlife. She also talks about the big rush to write she felt during her 20s versus the wisdom of taking it a bit more steadily now, and the Tel Aviv that infuriates her as it pushes away artists with its outrageous prices.

Yiscah Smith has had a fascinating life journey, including the fact that until she had gender reassignment surgery nearly 15 years ago, she was a man. But from as early as the age of five, when she wanted to watch her mother put on make-up but had no interest in watching her father shave, she felt like she was a girl. She joins host Ilene Prusher in the TLV1 studio to discuss her recently-published memoir, Forty years in the Wilderness: My Journey to Authentic Living.

Author Eve Horowitz joins our weekly literary interview program with Ilene Prusher. Horowitz talks about the story behind her most recently published short story as well as life-as-literature in the form of writing her Times of Israel blog, Therapy in the Holy City.

New York playwright Madelyn Kent, the creator of Sense Writing, joins host Ilene Prusher on her weekly literary affairs program to talk about how she uses mind-body techniques to help fellow writers and artists unblock their creativity. These days in writing programs there is so much emphasis on craft, Kent says, “but no one really talks about process.”

Tova Herzl, a former Israeli ambassador, joins host Ilene Prusher in the TLV1 studio to talk about her new book Madame Ambassador: Behind the Scenes with a Candid Israeli Diplomat. It’s not all fun and cocktail parties.

Novelist Yuval Abramovitz talks about the life-changing slip that led to his writing The List: Shout Out Your Dreams, a book which has soared to the top of Amazon’s Bestseller list in the month it’s been out. Get your pen and paper – ‘The List’ might encourage you to start making yours.

Noam Zion, author of A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah, sheds some light on what the holiday is really about, and tells us how the divisions within contemporary Jewry and Zionism emerge in the story of how Hanukkah is celebrated.

Rasha Mansour, an up-and-coming poet from Jatt, an Arab village south of Haifa, reads from her stunning work and shares some thoughts on a life of complicated identities.

Writer Ilana Blumberg, author of Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books, tells host Ilene Prusher about the art of writing memoir, her latest writing project focusing on inequalities in education, and her decision to move her family to Israel.

Hanna Yaffe joins host Ilene Prusher to talk about her new CD, 'Birth in a Time of Bloodshed: Wartime Lullabies,' an anthology of lullabies from 17 different countries sung in their original languages.Yaffe says lullabies are a universal art form, and can be a therapeutic outlet for parents’ feelings of frustration and grief.

Pamela Peled, Tzippi Sha-ked, and Danit Shemesh, authors of 'Three Ladies, Three Lattes: Percolating Discussions in the Holy Land,' join us in the studio to discuss their book, in which three women grapple with their apparently irreconcilable differences - much like the rabbis on the pages of the Talmud.