Please join us for a special event with author Karen Kirsten, who will be reading from and discussing her memoir, Irena's Gift. Karen will be in conversation with Rachael Cerrotti, author of We Share the Same Sky: A Memoir of Memory & Migration.

Weaving mystery, history and memoir, Irena’s Gift is the captivating account of one woman’s personal quest to uncover the unspoken and give voice to her family’s secret war-torn history.

From the glittering concert halls of interbellum Warsaw to the vermin-infested prison where an SS officer is convinced to save a Jewish child’s life, to the author’s upbringing in a Christian home, this is a story of resilience, sacrifice, Jewish identity, intergenerational trauma, and the secrets we keep to protect ourselves and those we love.

In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Joasia, knew nothing about this extraordinary event until she was thirty-two, when a letter arrived from a stranger. She also learned that the parents who raised her were actually her aunt and uncle. Joasia kept this knowledge hidden from her own daughter, Karen—until an innocent question unexpectedly revealed the truth.

Determined to understand the generational trauma that cloaked her family in silence, her own origins, and to help heal her mother’s pain, Karen set out to unearth decades of secrets and piece together a hidden history—from the glittering days of pre-war Poland to the little-known Radom Prison, where of 500 resistance members tortured, only 10 survived, her grandfather the only known Jewish one. There, Karen finds answers, yet not easy ones.

As she exposes her family’s saga of love and betrayal, countless brushes with death, precarious hiding places, and the astounding negotiation with an SS officer who saved her mother’s life, Karen must reconcile the complicated, multi-faceted truths behind human behavior.

Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena's Gift, a 2024 National Jewish Book Award finalist, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, and Australian Jewish Book Award finalist. Karen’s essay “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Her writing has also appeared in Salon.com, Huffington Post, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, Boston’s National Public Radio station, The Boston Herald, The Christian Post, The Sydney Morning Herald and more.