CONCORD FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS 2025
Karen Kirsten
Photo Credit: Liz Linder
Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena’s Gift, a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist and winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming. Her 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.
For more information, please visit https://www.karenkirsten.com/
Karen Kirsten
Author of Irena’s Gift
In Conversation with Jennifer S. Brown
Wednesday, October 29, 6:00 PM
Concord Free Public Library, Goodwin Forum, 129 Main Street
A 2025 National Jewish Book Award Finalist that judges described as “reads like a thriller,” and winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, IRENA’S GIFT explores how hidden histories can rupture families—and ultimately reshape our understanding of who we are.
In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Karen’s mother, 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 the letter hidden from her own daughter, Karen—until an innocent question revealed the truth.
Determined to help heal her mother’s pain, Karen set out to piece together a war-torn history. From the glittering days of pre-war Poland to the little-known Radom Prison, where a Jewish woman negotiates with an SS officer to save her sister’s child, to the author’s upbringing in a Christian home, IRENA’S GIFT is about the secrets we keep to protect ourselves and those we love. It is also a story of resilience and bravery, revealing how love and hope, too, can not only prevail through the worst imaginable circumstances, but resonate through time.
Jennifer S. Brown
Jennifer S. Brown’s debut novel, Modern Girls, was a USA Today bestseller, a Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read,” and a 2016 Goodreads Choice semifinalist for Historical Fiction. Her second historical novel, The Whisper Sister, takes place in the time of Prohibition. Jennifer teaches writing, both in-person in the Boston area and online through the Loft Literary Center.
Reviews of Irena’s Gift
“This memoir is the result of Kirsten’s journey to break open the seal of suffering and rebuild her family’s Jewish identity after decades of silence. Irena’s Gift is a beautifully written testimony to the power of memoir to heal and recreate a family’s history.”
“IRENA’S GIFT interrogates the messy complexity of family, both its tenderness and nurture but also its corrosive anger and rejection. It’s a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.”
“News withheld and what is passed on in doubt and affections is always dramatic if it can be creatively depicted. Karen Kirsten more than fulfils that task of narration and enchantment here.”