About
"Hotel America is the finest literary journal in the U.S. The writers and visual artists who appear in Hotel Amerika are recognized nationally and internationally." - Lois Zamora
An Exhilarant Attentiveness (2)
By Cynthia Hogue. In the violent first decade of the 21st century, I cannot stop considering ways a complex, artistic mind approaches the phenomenon of violence. I’ve brought this obsession to class and workshop discussions of poets like Dickinson and Stevens, for example, poets who aren’t the first to come to mind when we […]
A Spy In the House of Love
By Marcia Aldrich. I wrote a scene for an essay called “The Mother Bed,” and I return to it repeatedly, involuntarily. Writers aren’t supposed to repeat themselves. The assumption is a writer works through the emotions of a scene and then lets it go. Whoever developed this theoretical ideal didn’t grow up in my […]
Act Three
By David Lazar. Everyone may hath two birthdays, as Charles Lamb suggests, but the same doesn’t necessarily hold for literary magazines. So with glee and bated breath (for blowing out candles, of course) Hotel Amerika is set to embark on its third act (oh, Scott, in America there are endless acts . . . […]
Hotel Amerika Introduces its new Interview Series
Beginning with an interview by one of our editors, Liz Gower, with
The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible author Aviya Kushner
About the interviewee:
Aviya Kushner is the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey Into the Words and Worlds of the Bible(Spiegel & Grau / Random House), a 2015 National Jewish Book Award finalist and a 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature finalist. Her writing appears nationally and internationally, in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Wilson Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, TriQuarterly, The International Jerusalem Post, and Zoetrope: All-Story; she has been nominated for a Puschart Prize in poetry, and one of her essays was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2015.
She has been awarded grants from the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and the Illinois Arts Council, as well as residencies from Writers’ Omi at Ledig House and the Vermont Studio Center. Once a travel columnist for The International Jerusalem Post, she is now an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches creative writing and translation. She is also a contributing editor for A Public Space and a mentor for The National Yiddish Book Center.
About The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible:
In this eye-opening chronicle, Kushner tells the story of her vibrant relationship to the Bible, and along the way illustrates how the differences in translation affect our understanding of our culture’s most important written work. A fascinating look at language and the beliefs we hold most dear, The Grammar of God is also a moving tale about leaving home and returning to it, both literally and through reading.