The Many Lives of Anne Frank

Events, reviews, and other news!

Dear friends,

The Many Lives of Anne Frank is out in the world!

The official publication date is next Monday, January 27, but I’m hearing that some of you have already received your preorders. I love seeing your photos of the book on Instagram—please tag me!

The book has already received some wonderful press. In The Wall Street Journal, Megan Cox Gurdon says I have “done a wonderful thing” by allowing Anne’s voice to speak alongside mine and writes that “Readers who are familiar with Anne’s story … still have much to learn” from the book. In the Los Angeles Times, Alexander Nazaryan describes the book’s outlook as “humane” and “generous,” continuing, “Franklin writes with a rare combination of lightness and equanimity, with little sanctimony or finger-wagging” and “provides context that gives [Anne’s] story a new, edifying fullness…. It is unusual for a book to have a companion as faithful and elegant as the one Frank’s diary finds here.” I’m blushing! ☺️

A quick update on next week’s events:

• On January 27 at 3 p.m., I’m in conversation with historian Saskia Coenen Snyder of the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina. This one is online only via American Jewish University.

• On January 27 at 7 p.m., Chen Drachman, Dani Shapiro, and I will be joined at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on the Upper West Side by actress extraordinaire Tovah Feldshuh, who stars in the short film that Chen will be showing! Tovah has appeared in dozens of Broadway and Hollywood productions; her most recent project is the Netflix comedy Nobody Wants This. Tickets are here.

• On January 28 at 7 p.m., I’ll be in conversation with Jonathan Rosen at the Center for Jewish History in downtown Manhattan—tickets here. Their new Anne Frank exhibition has been deservedly getting a lot of press—I saw it today and highly recommend it.

• On January 29 at 7 p.m., I’m at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. with my former New Republic colleague Frank Foer, whose disturbing article for the Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending,” is a must-read.

• On February 1 at 6 p.m., I’ll be at Bird in Hand Bookstore in Baltimore. Hometown friends, please come out!

An adapted version of the book’s introduction is online at Hadassah magazine. And I wrote this essay for the Jewish Book Council about three dramatically different people all inspired by Anne Frank’s life: Yikealo Beyene, originally from Eritrea, who found her book in an Ethiopian refugee camp and translated it into his native Tigrinya; Jeff Mangum, the lead singer of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, who wrote one of the greatest albums of the last few decades after reading the Diary; and Roger Guenveur Smith, a Black theater artist, who performed a one-man show in the voice of Otto Frank. Longer versions of their stories are in the book.

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Some of you were confused by my new subscription policy, so I’ll explain it again. All new editions of this newsletter will continue to be free. If you just want to receive my monthly (or so) emails, you don’t have to change a thing.

As of this coming Monday, the archives will be paywalled. To access any post older than the most recent one, you will need to be a subscriber. Regular subscribers ($6/month or $60/year) will receive full access to the archive. Founding subscribers ($180/year) are entitled to a book club visit or a private 30-minute Zoom conference with me to discuss anything related to writing.

And a huge thank you to everyone who has preordered! Thanks to you, The Many Lives of Anne Frank is a “#1 new release” on Amazon. Just a reminder: anyone who preorders (Amazon/Barnes and Noble/bookshop.org; for signed copies, Greenlight) is eligible to win a visit from me to your book club! Just email your receipt to ruthfranklinwriter@gmail.com. If you don’t belong to a book club, I’m happy to substitute a 30-minute Zoom writing consultation.

As ever,

Ruth