Join us for a Sunday afternoon signing with local author Shannon Sims. Hear her wild story from the Amazon - "These Brazilians Traveled 18 Hours on a Riverboat to Vote. I Went with Them." - featured in the just released THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2019, an eclectic compendium of the best travel writing essays of the year, collected by Alexandra Fuller.

THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING gathers together a satisfyingly varied medley of perspectives, all exploring what it means to travel somewhere new. For the past two decades, readers have come to recognize this annual volume as the gold standard for excellence in travel writing.

Join us at the JCC for a special evening with Einat Admony featuring her new book SHUK: From Market to Table, the Heart of Israeli Home Cooking, which has been named a Best New Cookbook for Fall 2019 by Publishers Weekly, Epicurious and Robb Report. She will appear in conversation with chef Alon Shaya.

Israeli food has become the it cuisine, with Israeli restaurants opening throughout the country. But what makes Israeli food so special? Israel is a culinary crossroads, a mishmash of foods best represented in its shuks, or markets, where foods from Yemen, Morocco, Bulgaria, Libya, Turkey, Russia, the Levant, and many other regions sit side by side to create a food culture unlike anywhere else in the world.

Please join Octavia Books and Garden District Book Shop who are combing forces to celebrate the launch of two key New Orleans novels — THE REVISIONERS by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS by Jamie Attenberg. Both books are largely set in contemporary New Orleans. The authors will present their books and discuss what it is like to write about this complicated place, among other topics. They will be in conversation with Anne Gissleson, author of THE FUTILITARIANS: Our Year of Thinking, Drinking, Grieving and Reading.

This groundbreaking literary collaborative celebration will take place at Hotel Peter & Paul (2317 Burgundy Street) in their beautiful "church space" with support from the New Orleans chapter of the Women's National Books association and the publishers, HMH Books and Counterpoint Press. Doors open with a reception at 6pm, and a presentation at7pm. Following, there will be book signing on site with sales of Jami Attenberg's books handled through Garden District Book Shop and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's book sales handled through Octavia Books.