Jane Mushabac

Jane Mushabac’s 2016 novel, “His Hundred Years, A Tale,” is about a Turkish Jew, an everyman, a peddler, in the fast-deteriorating Ottoman Empire and in New York. She wrote the book on a Mellon Fellowship. It appears under the pen name Shalach Manot. Previously, Mushabac co-authored “A Short and Remarkable History of New York City” (Fordham University Press and Museum of the City of New York, 5th printing 2008)—a “Best of the Best” of the American Association of University Presses and praised by Ric Burns, Phillip Lopate, and Mike Wallace.

Mushabac’s book on Herman Melville was called “bold and ambitious” by Sewanee Review, and her essays on Melville have appeared in The Columbia Journal of American Studies and an MLA anthology.

Mushabac is Sephardic, descended from Turkish Jews on both sides of her family. Her NPR radio play, “Mazal Bueno: A Portrait in Song of the Spanish Jews,” is available on CD. Her writing has been translated into Russian, German, Bulgarian, and Turkish. Professor of English at City Tech, a CUNY college in Brooklyn, she teaches creative writing to students from all over the world.