Thalia Book Club: Amy Bloom's Away

In 1927, a Russian immigrant woman set off from New York City to walk home to Russia on foot. National Book Award-nominee Amy Bloom tells how she took this kernel of historic fact and dreamed up a lush, epic, and yet wonderfully intimate novel.

Download this program from Audible.com

Performance playlist:

Reading
Jill Eikenberry

Conversation
Amy Bloom and Isaiah Sheffer

A Discussion with the Audience

Amy Bloom's novel Away was named as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and many other publications. She is also the author of the acclaimed story collection Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; a nonfiction work, Normal; and the novel Love Invents Us. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, and Salon. Bloom teaches creative writing at Yale University, where she is a fellow of Calhoun College.

Jill Eikenberry starred in the Broadway productions of Moonchildren, Watch on the Rhine, Summer Brave, Onward Victoria, and All Over Town. Off-Broadway, she won an Obie Award for her performances in Lemon Sky and Life Under Water. She earned a Golden Globe Award and five Emmy Award nominations as Ann Kelsey on NBC's L.A. Law. Her films include Between the Lines, Arthur, and Hide in Plain Sight. She received the Humanitas Prize for Destined to Live, a breast cancer documentary she co-produced and hosted on NBC. She and her husband, Michael Tucker, created a cabaret show based on the story of their 35-year relationship entitled Life is a Duet, which they have presented around the country. Jill and Michael also produced Emile Norman-By His Own Design, a documentary film that will appear nationally on PBS this coming year. Most recently, she appeared in The York Theatre Company's new production of Enter Laughing: The Musical.

Isaiah Sheffer is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Symphony Space, as well as host and director of Selected Shorts live at Symphony Space, on tour, and on public radio nationwide. He is also founder, director, co-writer, and host of Symphony Space's political cabaret series The Thalia Follies.