January Event and Recent News

Dear friends,

I’ve got a Zoom event coming up that I’ve been working toward for over a year. On January 22, at 5 pm Pacific, I will be in conversation with Marat Grinberg about his book, The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf (brilliantly reviewed in LARB by Yelena Furman), which gave me language to describe my own sense of identity. This event is hosted by the Oregon Jewish Museum, tickets cost $5, and if you register and can’t make it, they’ll send you a recording! And I hope you can make it. The magic of Zoom!

The last few months have been busy for me, and I have a few things to report.

Back in November, a new short story of mine appeared in the Teatles, a fanzine out of Liverpool, England (!). If you’re on Instagram, their feed is all about the Beatles and tea! Yes, I’m excited. Did I mention that my story is being read in Liverpool??

Для моих русскоязычных друзей: смотрите “Ходики”, видео Алексея Зинатулина и АРТотеки Берёзовый сказ по рассказу Ольги Гренец из сборника Задержи дыхание. // Aleksey Zinatulin from Tver created a short film based on my story “The Clock.” First published in English at Tin House, online edition, this story is included in my collection LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press).

My story The Question, published earlier in 2024, received the Editors’ Choice Award from the magazine Scoundrel Time, as well as a Pushcart Prize nomination. Huge thanks to the editors Karen E. Bender and Paula Whyman!

I published four (4!) book reviews in the past two months, some of which took over a year to draft and place. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work, and I’d be overjoyed if anyone wanted to continue the conversation with me about any of these books:

A rediscovered 19th Century Russian novel by a female author, so revolutionary it was nearly censored out of existence: Advotya Panaeva’s The Talnikov Family, translated by Fiona Bell. https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-talnikov-family-a-novel-by-avdotya-panaeva-translated-from-the-russian-by-fiona-bell/ Kittentits, a carnivalesque novel by Holly Wilson, the first draft of which I read somewhere circa 2013 when we published an excerpt in Narrative Magazine. It’s a wild and unforgettable book! https://www.thecommononline.org/review-kittentits/18 Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages, edited by Nora Gold. https://www.themontrealreview.com/Articles/Jewish_Stories_Translated_from_18_Languages.phpA novel about the changing life and customs in the WWII-era Soviet Azerbaijan, People and Trees by Akram Aylisli, first published in the USSR in 1968-71, now in brand new translation to English by Katherine E. Young. https://wordswithoutborders.org/book-reviews/the-quiet-continued-the-quiet-akram-aylislis-post-wwii-novel-people-and-trees-aylisli-e-young/

Lastly, in a previous newsletter, I mentioned the drama around my kids’ San Francisco public elementary school. The good news is that we were able to push back against the district, and get it to rescind all the school closures. At least for next year. Here’s the Op-Ed I wrote for the Bay Area Reporter about my kids’ experience with our school.

Please keep in touch. The world is a painful and impossible place, and I’d love to hear from you about your corner of it.

Olga