Alex Epstein ( Hebrew: אלכס אפשטיין, born 1971, Saint Petersburg) is an Israeli writer, known for his micro stories. He moved to Israel at the age of eight and lived with his family in the city of

Lod Lod ( he, לוד, or fully vocalized ; ar, اللد, al-Lidd or ), also known as Lydda ( grc, Λύδδα), is a city southeast of Tel Aviv and northwest of Jerusalem in the Central District of Israel. It is situated between the lower Shephe ...

. Epstein received his first publishing contract from Zamora-Bitan when he was only 23.Eric Herschthal
Less Is More: Alex Epstein’s Poetic Prose"
'' The Jewish Week'', April 25, 2010. He has since published three novels and eight collections of stories in Hebrew, as well as numerous pieces in English-language journals including '' Ploughshares'', '' The Kenyon Review'', '' Guernica'', ''JuxtaProse Literary Magazine'', ''Zeek,'' ''Electric Literature'', '' The Guardian'', and ''The Collagist''. His translations in ''Electric Literature'' were illustrated by renowned Israeli artist and animator, David Polonsky. Epstein has twice received the Israeli Prime Minister's Prize for Authors and Poets (2003; 2016). Epstein lives in Tel Aviv and has served as a writer-in-residence for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and as a Schusterman Family Foundation Artist-in-Residence at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado (2010). In 2010 he took part of the PEN World Voices Festival in New York, he was featured in a panel with other writers such as Claire Messud,

Lorraine Adams Lorraine Adams is an American journalist and novelist. As a journalist, she is known as a contributor to the ''New York Times Book Review'', and a former contributor to '' The Washington Post''. As a novelist, she is known for the award-winning ...

, Norman Rush, Yiyun Li and Aleksandar Hemon. Alex Epstein's very brief stories (some of them as short as one sentence) have been described as examples of the "philosophical, or allegorical short-short story", one of the primary types of short story common to contemporary

Hebrew writing The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewis ...

. In a ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with M ...

'' review of Epstein's second English-language collection, writer Ian McGillis said that Epstein's works invited comparison to both "contemporary McSweeney's-style pranksters and the august lineage of Kafka, Borges and Bruno Schulz". Likewise, '' The Forward'' named Epstein "Israel's Borges." Epstein's work has been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, Portuguese and Russian. American publisher Clockroot Books published two translated collections of his work, ''Blue Has No South'' (2010) and ''Lunar Savings Time'' (2011). His second collection was widely and well-reviewed in ''Publishers Weekly'', ''Three Percent'', ''The Millions'', ''Words Without Borders'', and elsewhere. An experimentalist both in terms of narrative and format, Epstein's literature app "True Legends" was made available in 2014 and reviewed by the ''

LA Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

''. Israel's premier daily newspaper, ''

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner f ...

'', regularly publishes his stories under the title "Ktsartsarim" (short-shorts). The English ''

'' has also featured his work. His

microfiction Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story (also known as " twitterature"); ...

has been the subject of at least one peer-reviewed academic article in '' Shofar'' (2015), "The Shape of Time in Microfiction: Alex Epstein and the Search for Lost Time."

Books in English

* ''Blue Has No South'', Clockroot Books, 2010, (paperback). * ''Lunar Savings Time'', Clockroot Books, 2011, (paperback)."Lunar Savings Time" (review)
'' Publishers Weekly'', Jul 18, 2011.

References

External links

Alex Epstein's official website

Alex Epstein in Modern Hebrew Literature Lexicon

Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature
- list of works
Words Without Borders
- ten stories
Guernica
- ten stories {{DEFAULTSORT:Epstein, Alex 1971 births Living people Israeli male short story writers Israeli short story writers Israeli novelists International Writing Program alumni Recipients of Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works