http://binniekirshenbaum.com/work daily 1.0 2026-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1519335164541-O74U4X4PE0DG87C21ZPF/CoverSceneRoute.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525464899326-YY8F3Y3HGEWVYHRVLO6J/CoverAlmPerfMoment.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525465423766-JV6OJ4Y092RTAE8CI8D7/hesterCover.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525562064174-DT90E70I535T9J5YI47O/purepoetryCov.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525564836080-5O5L4GS3R2G6WV4YSUEB/CoverHistPersResz.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525565461925-IFZNGZTEPOXIQ2JVR2O4/CoverDisturbPlace.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525566003094-8TYVW3HFHFVV7NA2BMF4/mermaidCov.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1553111526671-AU4BDBIXRA5VKB2CS2MG/Website+Rabbits+Eisenberg.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1740279684543-TDR6IMI8KP4FP1MGC2YP/COUNTING+BACKWARDS+cover.jpg Books https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1522646522018-PSKJ2CX0Y3C9FJ7MNVAQ/CoverSceneRoute.jpg Books Divorced, alone, and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent—as Sylvia entertains Henry with stories of her peculiar family and her damaged friends, of dead ducks and Alma Mahler. Her narrative is a tapestry of remembrances and regrets...and her secret shame: a small, cowardly sin of omission. Yet when the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain "if only" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.   Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525464963749-AN7S7YZQ5RS8LKQOJ6DH/CoverAlmPerfMoment.jpg Books I n Brooklyn, in the Age of Disco, Valentine Kessler—a sweet Jewish girl who bears a remarkable resemblance to the Virgin Mary of Lourdes—has an unerring gift for shattering the dreams and hopes of those who love her. Miriam, her long suffering mother, betrayed and anguished by the husband she adores, seeks solace in daily games of mah-jongg with The Girls, a cross between a Greek Chorus and Brooklyn's rendition of the Three Wise Men, who dispense advice, predictions, and care in the form of poppy-seed cake and apple strudels. When her greatest fear for Valentine is realized, Miriam takes comfort in the thought that it couldn't get any worse. And then it does. Sagacious, sorrowful, and hilarious, An Almost Perfect Moment is a novel about mothers and daughters, star-crossed lovers, doctrines of the divine, and a colorful Jewish community that once defined Brooklyn. Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525465474320-U4VGV01WXV7G3V4D9JYC/hesterCover.jpg Books Hester Among the Ruins is a darkly comic novel about a love affair lived out in the shadows of World War II. History takes a contemporary twist when biographer Hester Rosenfeld very American and marginally Jewish goes to Munich to research the life of Heinrich Falk and becomes his mistress. Born in Berlin in 1943, raised in the ruins of defeat, Professor Falk is the German Everyman. Hester believes his life story could make for an important historical document, but when she delves deeper into his family's past, she finds herself reexamining her feelings about her German-Jewish immigrant parents and her complicated attraction to Heinrich. As the lovers' intimacy grows, each suspect the other of hiding something. Morally powerful, Kirshenbaum's searing novel bears witness to history's unforgettable legacy and its continuing impact.   Powell's Books | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525561763361-2LEVX817BK21Y7H6R770/purepoetryCov.jpg Books Lila Moskowitz is a smart-mouthed, Jewish-American beauty with a voracious appetite for sex, a remarkable talent for telling lies, and an unerring knack for making a mess of her life. An accomplished poet, she is renowned for writing "smut and filth in terza rima." Having fled the all- consuming passion of her marriage, she can no longer compose so much as a couplet; ghosts have taken over her apartment, and the contrast between her feelings for her present lover and her former husband is breaking her heart. Insight comes with the realization that love can be undone by the same desires that nurture it. Lila knows that she has to take action, and in doing so learns some startling truths about herself, her capacity for love, and the nature of true freedom.   Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525564944093-1TRG0F7J4YCDESZFAOFS/CoverHistPersResz.jpg Books - From New York City to the former East Germany, from rural Virginia to affluent suburbia, the stories in this collection visit the territory of recent history. The Vietnam War, the Kennedy era, the destruction of the Berlin Wall and renovation of Ellis Island serve as a backdrop against which Kirshenbaum’s characters find themselves on the human quest for who they are and where they belong, grappling with love, loss, and other awful truths. Lydia Langorelli, the town greaser who wears conical-cupped bras and thick black eyeliner, learns just how cruel the peace-and-love crowd can be in “For Widgit Stands.” The title story leaves Lorraine, a Southerner, wondering if her German paramour will find the inspiration to leave his wife amidst the destruction of the Berlin Wall. “The Zen of Driving” takes an urban wife on imaginary road trips throughout America, suggesting that her desire to belong to herself is ultimately a desire to escape her stifling marriage. Whether realistic or allegorical, witty or contemplative, the reader invariably enters into a fictional world laced with black humor. Touching the social and political pulse points of America and at the same time transcending their historical background, these are wise and timeless stories about the human condition, told in a unique narrative voice that is at once profoundly intelligent and admirably unassuming, belonging to a born storyteller who makes us laugh—until it hurts.   Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525565487838-791WQATVKKDART5WL6WR/CoverDisturbPlace.jpg Books A New York woman—married, Jewish, left-handed—carries on three simultaneous affairs. Distant, aloof, tough-talking, she is concerned more with God than religion, and blithely breaks seven of the Ten Commandments in her search for innocence and a safe place to land. She takes the Lord’s name in vain, dishonors her mother, her father, and the Sabbath. She lies. She steals, She covets. Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Erotic with a rare honesty, darkly humorous and profound, A Disturbance in One Place points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader irresistibly into the world of a woman who seems unable to decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1525566025807-YKFRIE3CKUV78BIDD1BY/mermaidCov.jpg Books A fresh and captivating novel about the extraordinary friendship between Edie Hawkes and Mona Rose, two young women who prefer to see themselves as girls. Acting your age is for boring people. They have themselves a grand time roaming New York neighborhoods, finding the divine in the ordinary and avoiding permanent employment. The men they get involved with are an odd lot ranging from a boy who refuses to say anything about himself to a Soviet delegate from the United Nations. For Edie and Mona, the best part of any love affair is when it's over, and they can re-hash it, laugh and chalk it up as no loss. But why then is Edie obsessed with the idea of falling madly in love with someone, anyone, who will marry her? Is this another one of her fleeting diversions? Mona Rose refuses to acknowledge that there might be some misery beneath the carefree facade. When Edie meets the man she believes will save her—"Save you from what?"—we wonder, along with Mona Rose whether Edie is going to abandon the friendship, or is this wedding just another game. Powell's Books | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1553111613522-NJPMS55WO4W8PXVEUKV5/Website+Rabbits+Eisenberg.jpg Books - Published May 7, 2019 It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats.While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum’s protagonist—an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer—fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about what brought her there. Her story is a brilliant and brutally funny dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly. Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of—or into—the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of our most and indispensable writers. Powell's Books | IndieBound | Amazon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/630999d1-6d21-4f91-9272-b71b13a14719/COUNTING+BACKWARDS+cover.jpg Books http://binniekirshenbaum.com/new-cover-page daily 0.75 2015-09-11 http://binniekirshenbaum.com/an-almost-perfect-moment daily 0.75 2016-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480460802405-7OQXW061E4KRHYU8G8XR/Almost_Perfect%282%29.jpg an almost perfect moment https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1387311840619-0HOTM9U7ZAL70CITF5P0/almost+cover.JPG an almost perfect moment Cover design by High Design, NYC Cover photo by Scott Areman/Corbis http://binniekirshenbaum.com/hester-among-the-ruins daily 0.75 2015-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480460966090-B1R8AAUTKUIRE65JUNYY/Hester%285%29.jpg hester among the ruins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1387226924052-9DC0K8N2GFS74ZGSBJRB/hester.jpg hester among the ruins Cover design by Julie Metz Cover photo by Gary Issacs http://binniekirshenbaum.com/a-disturbance-in-one-place daily 0.75 2015-10-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480460857580-9TCEXBLXKMQJWFZPXHMO/Disturbance%283%29.jpg a disturbance in one place https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1386639939275-I0FPLM1RG8JB1OBLJNMX/dist1.jpg a disturbance in one place Cover design by David High and Ralph Del Pozzo Cover photo of figure by Eric Larrayadieu http://binniekirshenbaum.com/the-scenic-route daily 0.75 2016-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480460728259-W8PAZOY2WAXGUR3JI98C/Scenic_Route%281%29.jpg the scenic route https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1458945522530-8QAXSVDODGH5IVKURHYU/scenicroute_newcover.jpg the scenic route Cover design by Allison Saltzman Cover photo by Henrik Weis/Getty Images http://binniekirshenbaum.com/pure-poetry daily 0.75 2015-10-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480461027662-T9UEGOBA0848GPEU4AAV/Pure_Poetry%286%29.jpg pure poetry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1387223215591-IAH227NBDHBMPXBXJ9BI/pure+poetry.jpg pure poetry Cover photo by The Special Photographers http://binniekirshenbaum.com/history-on-a-personal-note daily 0.75 2015-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480460909675-NHDJJMX70N6EQTGQ50T0/History%284%29.jpg history on a personal note https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1386640002111-YDBYC9YNZBN5OE3Q3FTI/history1.jpg history on a personal note Cover design by David High and Ralph Del Pozzo http://binniekirshenbaum.com/on-mermaid-avenue daily 0.75 2015-10-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1480461078827-8Q9ASQKU0NU0YXM1X7UA/Mermaid_Avenue%287%29.jpg on mermaid avenue https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1387223513363-XFR3BXVNPQMVWH0V34DU/mermaid.jpg on mermaid avenue Cover design by Harold Wortsman Graffiti photo by Charles Was http://binniekirshenbaum.com/contact daily 0.75 2018-03-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1457630247428-HH8ENGS3DEB8I78PHKIE/Binnie+in+a+crowd.jpg Contact http://binniekirshenbaum.com/about daily 0.75 2016-03-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1516063155331-8PJA0YW48WN27PS0FINB/PurimEditedCropped+copy.jpg about https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1448500713648-3ANCN7QGT8Z8OU2C7FYP/BINN1.jpg about Photo: Marion Ettlinger http://binniekirshenbaum.com/codebook daily 0.75 2018-02-05 http://binniekirshenbaum.com/etcetera daily 0.75 2026-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1536270857246-GMB2JQMXL0FLM4AU913O/PurimBinnie_edited-1.png EVENTS, & ET CETERA https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1526605977341-XHFKP8TKIRFODIWZQIB9/BINN1.jpg EVENTS, & ET CETERA is the author of eight novels and one short story collection. Her books have been selected as Favorite Books of the Year by The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek Magazine, Vogue and National Public Radio. Her work has been translated into 11 languages. She is a professor of Fiction in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University. http://binniekirshenbaum.com/rabbits-for-food daily 0.75 2019-03-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1546987105129-HC6CXQWLRNRDTJV4DEMY/9781641290531.jpg Rabbits for Food https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52601d1ce4b0cb231da929ae/1546987332944-V1V2Q0V4VDU5CUFXPM9O/9781641290531.jpg Rabbits for Food - Forthcoming May 7, 2019 Master of razor-edged literary humor Binnie Kirshenbaum returns with her first novel in a decade, a devastating, laugh-out-loud funny story of a writer’s slide into depression and institutionalization. It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced friendship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum’s protagonist—an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer—fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital where she refuses all modes of recommend treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about how she got to this place. Her story is a hilarious and harrowing deep dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly. Propelled by stand-up comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of—or into—the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of our most witty and indispensable writers.