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Ayelet Tsabari

Ayelet Tsabari

MFA Mentor, Creative Nonfiction

Ayelet Tsabari Ayelet Tsabari

MFA (Guelph U)

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize and The Vine Awards, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long-listed to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and MailForeign PolicyMaclean’s and The National Post, has won a National Magazine Award, an Edna Staebler Award and was shortlisted for CBC Short Story Prize. 

Selected Publications

Books

  • Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language, co-edited with Eufemia Fantetti and Leonarda Carranza, Book*hug Press, 2021. 
  • The Art of Leaving, HarperCollins.
  • The Best Place on Earth, HarperCollins.

Interests

The craft of writing; diverse storytelling; oral histories; women’s narratives; Mizrahi identity and history; Yemeni Jewish history and culture; translation and writing in a second language; lyric essays