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With the republication of my uplit novel, I’m reposting this article from 2019, which first appeared on donnasbookblog.

My childhood was marred by bullying. It was the urge to do something to stop the bullying that led me to catch social anxiety. I kept quiet as much as I could, because they couldn’t tease me for things I said if I didn’t say them, and this became a habit that I couldn’t discard when I wanted to.

Decades later, after discovering this thing that had “strangled” me for so long had a name, and that I was by no means alone with this problem, I joined an online forum for sufferers of social anxiety. Here, I learned a lot about the others, about what we shared as well as our differences. I realised that most of the others, like me, had mistakenly imagined themselves to be alone with it…

With the republication of my uplit novel, I’m posting an updated version of this post from 2019.

What is UPLIT and why might it interest me?

If you look upuplitin a dictionary, you’re likely to find that either it doesn’t exist or it’s the past of the verbuplight: to illuminate from below. But google it and you’ll finduplitorup litis a genre people are starting to talk about. And to read.

Possibly, there is a connection between those two meanings ofuplit. It’s about lighting the world from below, from the ordinary people, rather than having to endure spotlights from above.

Anuplitnovel is one of kindness, compassion and empathy. But it doesn’t sugar-coat the world; it’s “about facing devastation, cruelty, hardship and loneliness and then saying: ‘But there is still this,’” says…

Saturday night folk dancing sessions in Jerusalem are run by Ofer Alfasi.

Ofer is very talented and diligent. He knows all the dances very well. He invests a lot of effort, demonstrating from the centre of the circle and watching to make sure we’ve learnt properly.

But he’s not good at blowing his own trumpet. He’s reticent about introducing the dances he choreographed. Fortunately, another Ofer, who also has a dance to his name, has been championing the first Ofer’s dances recently, and they’re really good.

I’m no better at blowing my own trumpet, but I need to say this, so please forgive me:

I recently reread my novel, Cultivating a Fuji, making very minor changes to it. And as I read it, I realised how good it is, and how much I’d love it to be read widely, firstly for enjoyment – the story mixes poignancy, humour…

I’m very pleased to welcome my author friend Miriam Drori to the blog today. I have known Miriam for about eight years, but I only had the pleasure of meeting her in person a few years ago in Carcassonne, when our former publisher invited us to an author get-together.

Miriam is about to publish Style and the Solitary, the first in a series of crime mysteries set in Jerusalem. So what does that have to do with France? Well, one of the main characters is an immigrant from France and therefore something of an outsider. And the story of Beauty and the Beast, which was published by a French author in 1740, has a significant bearing on Miriam’s story. Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve was a penniless widow in a man’s world and thus also…