The 2nd Annual Featured Author event presenting Steve Sheinkin

Congregation Shaara Tfille and The Jewish Community Center of Saratoga Springs, located at 84 Weibel Avenue in Saratoga Springs, invite the community to join them on Sunday, November 15 at 12pm for their 2nd Annual Featured Author program with Newberry Medal Winner and National Book Award Nominee Steve Sheinkin. Author of The Port Chicago 50 and The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey and many other young adult books will speak at 1pm followed by a Question & Answer period and Book Signing. Sponsored by a generous grant from Jewish Federation of Northeast NY, a $10 fee includes Lunch. Please RSVP by Wednesday, November 11th at 584-2370 or saratogajcc@albany.twcbc.com. Bio -- Steve Sheinkin was born in Brooklyn, NY, and my family lived in Mississippi and Colorado before moving back to New York and settling in the suburbs north of New York City. He went to Syracuse University and studied communications and international relations. The highlight for him during those years was a summer he spent in Central America, where he worked on a documentary on the streets of Nicaragua. After college he moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for the environmental group called the National Audubon Society. Then, he and his brother Ari moved to Austin, Texas to make movies together. Mr. Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic histories for young readers. His work is widely acclaimed. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights received the 2014 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and was a National Book Award finalist. The Notorious Benedict Arnold won the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for nonfiction. His exploration of the atomic bomb, Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-The World's Most Dangerous Weapon was a Newbery Honor Book, National Book Award finalist, and winner of the Sibert Award as well as the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Mr. Sheinkin's most recent work, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, delves into the political intrigue of the Pentagon Papers. Other recent titles are LINCOLN'S GRAVE ROBBERS, a true-crime thriller, and the RABBI HARVEY series of graphic novels. Steve lives with his family in Saratoga Springs. He states, As a kid my favorite books were action stories and outdoor adventures: sea stories, searches for buried treasure, sharks eating people? that kind of thing. Probably my all-time favorite was a book called Mutiny on the Bounty, a novel based on the true story of a famous mutiny aboard a British ship in the late 1700s. When my brother Ari graduated from college a few years later, we decided to move to Austin, Texas to make movies together. We lived like paupers in a house with a hole in the floor where bugs crawled in. We wrote some screenplays, and in 1995 made our own feature film, a comedy called A More Perfect Union, about four young guys who decide to secede from the Union and declare their rented house to be an independent nation. We were sure it was going to be a huge hit; actually we ended up deep in debt. After that I moved to Brooklyn and decided to find some way to make a living as a writer. I wrote short stories, screenplays, and worked on a comic called The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey. In 2006, after literally hundreds of rejections, my first Rabbi Harvey graphic novel was finally published. Meanwhile, I started working for an educational publishing company, just for the money. We?d hire people to write history textbooks, and they?d send in their writing, and it was my job to check facts and make little edits to clarify the text. Once in a while I was given the chance to write little pieces of textbooks, like one-page biographies or skills lessons. ?Understanding Bar Graphs? was one of my early works. The editors noticed that my writing was pretty good. They started giving me less editing to do, and more writing. Gradually, I began writing chapters for textbooks, and that turned into my full-time job. All the while, I kept working on my own writing projects. In 2008 I wrote my last textbook. I walked away, and shall never return. My first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? ? full of all the stories about the American Revolution that I was never allowed to put into textbooks. But looking back, I actually feel pretty lucky to have spent all those years writing textbooks. It forced me to write every day, which is great practice. And I collected hundreds of stories that I can't wait to tell.  Congregation Shaara Tfille is an egalitarian Conservative congregation located at 84 Weibel Avenue, Saratoga Springs, NY that welcomes all Jews, inter-faith families and the LGBTQ community. The Synagogue holds Monday and Thursday morning services at 7:30am, third Friday Family Shabbat evening at 7:30pm, Saturday Shabbat morning services at 10:00am. In addition to regular religious program, the Congregation offers a Hebrew School, Adult Education programs, Live 92nd Street  broadcast series, Men's Club and Sisterhood.