Author Events

Experience conversations with award-winning and best-selling authors year-round.

Meet the Minds Behind the Stories

The Barshop JCC’s Author Speaker Series brings nationally renowned writers to San Antonio. From memoirs and fiction to historical nonfiction and cultural commentary, each event features engaging discussions and the opportunity to interact with acclaimed authors.

A Platform for Jewish Voices

Many of our featured authors explore Jewish themes and identity, offering insight into Jewish history, culture, and experience. These events are part of our commitment to fostering cultural enrichment and understanding.

Author Speaker Events

September 30 6:30PM

Two-Minute Torah gives fresh voice to an ancient wis­dom that still has impor­tant mes­sages for us in the 21st cen­tu­ry. In a mere two min­utes time, any­one who places a pre­mi­um on truth and integri­ty will find this rou­tine of dai­ly study invig­o­rat­ing and inspir­ing. It will change the way we under­stand our­selves, our friends, and our fam­i­lies. It will change the way we go about mak­ing impor­tant deci­sions in our lives.

October 18 10:30AM

Writ­ten as a com­pact and acces­si­ble guide, the book presents a clear, moral­ly ground­ed nar­ra­tive span­ning antiq­ui­ty to the mod­ern era. The book guides read­ers through the cen­tral events that have shaped the Jew­ish expe­ri­ence, includ­ing bib­li­cal ori­gins and exile, the devel­op­ment of com­mu­nal life, the rise of mod­ern Zion­ism, the Holo­caust, the found­ing of the State of Israel, and the ongo­ing strug­gle for secu­ri­ty and legit­i­ma­cy in a rapid­ly chang­ing world. A care­ful­ly con­struct­ed FAQ address­es com­mon ques­tions and mis­con­cep­tions, offer­ing clar­i­ty with­out slo­gans or polemics. Writ­ten for stu­dents, edu­ca­tors, and gen­er­al read­ers, the book is well suit­ed for Jew­ish lit­er­ary and edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams seek­ing to fos­ter seri­ous, his­tor­i­cal­ly ground­ed dis­cus­sion across generations.

January 13 6:30PM

Post Traumatic Parenting is a practical, compassionate, and substantive guide for parents who want to break free of their trauma wounds and raise their children with greater calm, connection, and intention. The book introduces Dr. Robyn Koslowitz’s signature trauma app metaphor: the idea that unresolved trauma can run in the background like an old survival program, shaping how parents react even when they want to do better. At its core, the book offers a hopeful message: your damage does not have to damage your children. Dr. Koslowitz helps readers understand how trauma affects the nervous system, why parenting can feel so triggering, and how secure attachment is built through helping children feel safe, soothed, seen, and secure. Warm, accessible, and deeply validating, Post Traumatic Parenting gives parents unique tools and instructions for turning their own survival strategies into parenting superpowers.

March 2 6:30PM

This is a collection of thirty-six essays by as many different Australian women, each of whom reflects on how her own small world— her family and friendships, her work and professional opportunities, and her relationship to Israel and/or Judaism—changed in the aftermath of the event of October 7. Ruptured is a chorus of voices, not always harmonious and certainly not uniform, that allows for an ongoing dialogue between the different pieces and also with the reader. It wrestles with complex issues and documents the specific ways in which October 7 rattled almost every aspect of the contributors’ lives, this book is both an important contribution to Jewish history and a thought-provoking read for anyone trying to make sense of their own shifting identities during these turbulent times.

May 2 2:00PM

Michael Shapiro’s Ketubah Renaissance: The Artful Revival of the Jewish Marriage Contract is a brilliant and beautiful presentation of illustrated Jewish marriage documents created in recent decades. The flourishing of Jewish communities in Israel and the US during the past few decades, coupled with advancing artistic technology, have led to a resurgence in illustrated ketubahs, which the book demonstrates through sixty examples. From paper-cut to wood-cut to AI-generated images, this volume offers a tapestry of testimonies to not only the love Jewish couples have for each other, but their affinity for the traditional text that reflects covenantal love of the Jewish people and G-d.

May 11 6:30PM

Saving Abigail is a true story about a little girl taken hostage by Hamas the morning of October 7, 2023, after thousands of terrorists breached Israel by land, sea, and air. That day, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and 246 innocent people were dragged across the border into Gaza against their will. Among them was three-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, whose border community was ransacked by fighters going from house to house. Abigail’s mother and father were murdered in front of their children, and Abigail—the youngest—was abducted. With no prior experience or road map for how to save a hostage from captivity, Abigail’s great aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali undertook an international effort to share her niece’s face and story—with the US government, bipartisan congressional leaders, and world leaders—finding unlikely allies and supporters along the way.

May 26 6:30PM

Michelle Friedman’s Divine Corners: In the Shadow of the Holocaust on a Catskills Chicken Farm is an engaging, emotionally moving, and often humorous read that delves into the unique childhood and family history of its author. Friedman was raised by Holocaust survivors on a chicken farm in Divine Corners, a remote hamlet in the Catskills town of Fallsburg. Despite turbulent moments from the author’s childhood and the tragic impacts of familial estrangement, Divine Corners is primarily a story about the power of resilience, perspective, and forgiveness. It offers an account of how postwar American expectations and European sensibilities blended together in the lives of Holocaust survivors and their children. Friedman’s capacity to understand the impacts of her past, as well as her willingness to acknowledge the limits of memory and interpretation, encourages the reader to reflect on their own family legacies and the often-unseen forces that shape relationships across generations.

FAQs

Most events require advanced registration through our website. Simply click on the event listing and follow the registration link to save your spot.

Many of our author events are free and open to the public, though some may include a small fee or optional book purchase.

Events are held at the Barshop JCC or other designated venues.

Yes! Featured titles are typically available for sale at the event, occasionally with an opportunity to have your copy signed by the author.

Absolutely. We welcome suggestions from the community. Please email us at jcc@jcc-sa.org with your recommendations.