Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 1967, Etgar Keret is the most popular writer among Israel's young generation and has also received international acclaim. He has been published in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope, among others. In 2010, Keret was awarded the prestigious French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres decoration. He has twice been a finalist for the O'Connor Short Story Award. Most recently, he was awarded the Charles Bronfman Prize (USA, 2016) and the ADEI-WIZO Prize for The Seven Good Years (Italy, 2016).
In this episode, Etgar and Ashley speak about writing fiction during the pandemic, why the famously productive writer moved to Berlin for a year to "do nothing," the flattening effect social media has on identity, and how growing up as the son of Israeli Holocaust survivors shaped him as a writer who looked out of Israel, and back in time, to the European writers of the diaspora for inspiration.
Etgar also opens about his latest project, his Substack called Alphabet Soup, how he inspired the great Salman Rushdie to create his own Substack, and why he names his most "pathetic" characters after his most dedicated Substack subscribers
Check out Etgar's Substack here: https://etgarkeret.substack.com/
Read the Tablet Magazine article discussed, "The Upgraded Me," here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/upgraded-me-etgar-keret
Read one of Etgar's stories here: https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/gravity
Etgar Keret- Celebrated, Prize-Winning Fiction Writer