Ayelet Tsabari’s memoir, “The Art of Leaving”, traces Tsabari’s journey from her childhood home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv to Vancouver and Toronto — and from her native Hebrew to her adopted English — alongside the story of her grandparents’ migration from Yemen to the land of Israel in the 1930s. An astute observer of lives of Mizrahi Jews in Israel and beyond in her award-winning short story collection “The Best Place on Earth” (2016), in “The Art of Leaving” Tsabari delivers a powerful coming-of-age story that reflects on identity and belonging and explores themes of family and home — both inherited and chosen.

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She is the author of The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long listed to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing, The University of King’s College MFA, Tel Aviv University, and at Bar Ilan University.