Get Lit! Scooped New York Times

You knew, of course, that Get Lit! is the eminent literary event of the Northwest, but did you know that we even showcase great authors before they get attention from the New York Times?

If you missed Adina Hoffman's reading during the festival, or you want to revisit with this fantastic author, you can now read the May 5th New York Times book review of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century.

According to Dwight Garner, the NY Times reviewer: "Mr. Ali’s poetry-talk, in this biography, is ingenious and ardent. He compares his poetic method to billiards (“You aim over here ... to strike over there”), and he has this to say about the crossroads of religion and writing: 'The more mosques, the less poetry.'

Ms. Hoffman plucks, like olives, lovely stories to tell about him. Mr. Ali would become so engaged when talking to a friend, the poet and editor Michel Haddad, she writes, that they would take turns walking each other home all night long:...."

Not enough to satisfy your thirst for news about Ms. Adina? Hear her in person again in an interview with her, included in a feature on Taha Muhammad Ali on Chicago Public Radio's "Worldview" program.

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood, and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, which was released earlier this month. My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, the biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, reflects on the ways in which history registers in daily life, and on the often alchemical means by which experience is transformed into art. Hoffman's other writings, including essays and criticism, have appeared in the Nation, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe, Raritan, and on the World Service of the BBC. Formerly a film critic for the American Prospect and the Jerusalem Post, she is one of the founders and editors of Ibis Editions, a small press that publishes the literature of the Levant. She lives in Jerusalem.

Stay tuned for information about next year's festival. We bet you can't wait to find out who's coming so that you know about whom you can say: "I knew them when..."