Lev Rafael , who will join author Steve Luxenberg (“Annie’s Ghost”) and Steve Lehto (“Death’s Door” ) on the showcase panel “Remembering & Forgetting: The Art of the Memoir”  at the 8th Annual Kerrytown BookFest. Raphael was recently added as a literary blogger on the Huffington Post daily blog. All three authors discovered secrets that had been buried prior to their investigations.

In his first post, Raphael, author of 18 books in a variety of genres, deconstructs and disproves the recent claims by a minor theatre figure in New York City that Shakespeare was a Jewish woman. Point by painful point Raphael destroys the argument of John Hudson who asserts that the English poet Aemilia Bassano Lanyer was the real Shakespeare and herself Jewish. Not so,  Raphael, playing the literary sleuth, points out in so many ways.

The reason for Raphael’s post was a recent cover story in the magazine “Reform Judaism” on Hudson’s claims. In his post Raphael says, “ Shakespeare Denial in its newest, Jewish incarnation is another example of the rise of conspiracy theory to a respectable forum where people treat it seriously, instead of saying: Are you for real?”

Raphael has won numerous awards and his most recent book “My Germany” is a memoir detailing the discovery of lost details  of his parents lives, both whom were Holocaust survivors. The book is a journey of discovery and dogged detective work by Raphael to learn who his parent’s were and who he is now. It’s to be expected that in some places the book takes on the feel of a detective story since Raphael is the author of numerous mystery novels.

Raphael is a winner of Amelia’s Reed Smith Fiction Prize and “International Quarterlies” Crossing Boundaries Prize for innovative prose, awarded by D.M. Thomas. That memoir appears in his collection of memoirs Writing a Jewish Life. His first book of short stories Dancing on Tisha B’Av won a Lambda Literary Award.

This fall Raphael will tour Germany to talk about his book “My Germany”.