Liana Finck

A Bintel Brief

A graphic novel and monthly zine based on the "Bintel Brief" section of the The Yiddish Forward, including interactive online elements, workshops, and new Bintel Brief letters.

Events

Aug 6, 2012Liana Finck Speaks at Symposium
New York

Apr 25, 2012In Honor of Liana’s ‘Bintel Brief’ …
New York

Jan 11, 2012Liana Finck Exhibition at 6th and I
Washington DC

The NY Fellows

Judd Greenstein
Judith Berkson
Hadassa Goldvicht
Netta Yerushalmy
Sylvan Oswald
Hannah Bos
Oded Hirsch
Liana Finck
Alicia Jo Rabins

Work Project Statement Bio Press

Images

Liana Finck wrote and illustrated a graphic novel based on the “Bintel Brief,” The Yiddish Forward’s advice column. The early writers of these letters were young immigrants who needed help with a variety of heartbreaking and absurd dilemmas. Liana’s book consists of single- and multi-page vignettes adapted from the letters, seen from the point of view of a narrator – an omniscient but relatively helpless columnist inspired by the Forward’s founding editor, Abraham Cahan.

The Bintel Brief comic was serialized in The Forward newspaper in 2012, returning in a sense to its original venue. Additionally, there were exhibitions of the work at The Museum at Eldridge Street in March 2012, and at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington D.C.

Poet and artist, Liana Finck is an emerging graphic novelist. She attended Cooper Union College in New York on a full scholarship. In 2009, Liana studied at Université de La Cambre in Belgium on a Fulbright Fellowship that sponsored her creation of a graphic novel based on Tintin creator Georges Remi’s bad dreams. Her earlier publications include The Shul Detective, a graphic blog for Lilith Magazine, in which she explored synagogues in New York city, Revelations and the Stupid Creatures (Mark Batty/Random House), in which she collaborated with stuffed animal maker John Murphy on a visual adaptation of the End of Days, and Phèdre: a Comic Tragedy (Lulu.com) a rhyming graphic novel adapted from her own translation of Racine’s classic play. Liana has served as the artist in residence at Camp Ramah in New York and worked with poet Mark Rudman and artist Maira Kalman.