Thursday, December 12 at 11:00 A.M. at FJC
Michelle Ephraim on Green World: A Tragi­com­ic Mem­oir of Love & Shakespeare

Open to the public / General Admission is $5

Advance registration is required. Click here:

Winner of the 2023 Juniper Prize for Cre­ative Non­fic­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Press, a nation­al book award

“Green World reckons with global, historical, and personal tragedy and shows how literature—comic and tragic—can help us brave every kind of anguish.”—Jewish Women's Archive

“Green World is one of the funniest and most captivating memoirs I’ve read in years. Ephraim’s wit flies off the page.”—Chris Monks, managing editor, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“Michelle Ephraim has delighted audiences on The Moth stage, and you will find her wit, compassion for those around her, and deep self-awareness on every page of Green World. She expertly weaves complex Shakespearean characters and plots into tales of the highly relatable highs and lows of her own life. It is a lively, well written and deeply human book.”—Catherine Burns, artistic director, The Moth

“In Green World Ephraim deftly braids together her own life, the lives of her parents, both Holocaust survivors, and her reading of Shakespeare. I love how she uses The Merchant of Venice to illuminate complicated questions of anti-Semitism and familial loyalty. And I love the wit and warmth with which she writes about her journey in academia. This is a compulsively readable memoir.”—Margot Livesey, author of The Road from Belhaven

Green World: A Tragi­com­ic Mem­oir of Love & Shake­speare is the hilar­i­ous and heart­break­ing sto­ry of Ephraim’s quest to become a Shake­speare schol­ar and to find com­mu­ni­ty and home. As she stud­ies Shake­speare, Ephraim’s world uncan­ni­ly begins to mir­ror the sto­ry of the Jew­ish daugh­ter in The Mer­chant of Venice, and she finds her­self in a Green World, an idyl­lic place where Shakespeare’s hero­ines escape their fam­i­ly trau­ma. Green World reck­ons with glob­al, his­tor­i­cal, and per­son­al tragedy and shows how lit­er­a­ture — com­ic and trag­ic — can help us brave every kind of anguish.

Michele Ephraim is a Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is the author of Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage and co-author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Lilith, Tikkun, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and other venues.