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Join Ilan Stavans, publisher of Restless Books and co-editor of How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, for A Night of Philosophy and Ideas, an annual all-night marathon of talks from leading thinkers from around the world at the Brooklyn Public Library. He’ll be discussing How Yiddish Changed America, an extraordinary anthology that mines the rich history of the language in America, from the Lower East Side to Hollywood to Buenos Aires, published in collaboration with the Yiddish Book Center. As he explains, “Yiddish defies expectations. It remains a cul­tur­al engine, with sta­mi­na to spare…. This is how a language dances around its own fate, puz­zling its ene­mies, mak­ing room for new futures.” Copies will be available for sale in the main lobby from Albertine Bookstore.

When: Saturday, February 1, 11:30 PM–12 AM

Where: Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11238

Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast.

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