JUNE PROGRAMS
More Programs to Be Added Soon
Friday New Initiatives Salon
June 5 from 6pm to 8pm
It Takes Two: How An Author-Editor Team Took on a Daunting Topic and Turned It Into a Novel. With Nathaniel Popkin and Ann de Forest.
Nathaniel Popkin, author of new book Partly Strong, Partly Broken (New Door Books, 2026) discusses his novel with editor Ann De Forest. Set in a suburban New Jersey interfaith community during the fall of 2023 and told through the eyes of the passionate, inclusivity-minded Rabbi Adinah, the novel unfolds as the shadow of Hamas’ gruesome October 7th attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza looms over an already fractured community.
Nathaniel Popkin is the author of eight fiction and nonfiction books including To Reach the Spring (2020), The Year of the Return (2019), and Everything Is Borrowed (2018), which explore the intersections of Jewish ideals and lived experience. He is co-editor of Who Will Speak for America? (2018).
He has written and produced multiple Emmy Award–winning history documentaries, including Philadelphia: The Great Experiment (2011–2019), Sisters in Freedom (2018), In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America (2026), and For the Common Good: The Woman Who Shaped the Nation (2026), produced through his studio, You’ll Never Forget Productions, co-founded with director Andrew Ferrett.
Ann de Forest is a writer, editor, and essayist whose work explores place, memory, and the ways people connect with their environments. She is the editor of Ways of Walking, a 26-essay anthology from New Door Press featuring writers, artists, and scholars reflecting on walking as observation, witness, and discovery.
Raised in California and based in Philadelphia for more than three decades, de Forest writes on urban life, architecture, art, and preservation. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she is known for blending personal narrative with cultural and environmental reflection.
$20 with bespoke cocktail, wine, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and light fare. Please RSVP to Renae Dinerman by Wednesday, June 3 at 6pm.