J. (SAN FRANCISCO) -- He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, writer-in-residence at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and co-curator for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2013 exhibition “Beyond Belief.” Schifrin won the 2016 Wilner Award for Short Fiction from San Francisco State. Currently, he teaches writing there and at UC Berkeley.
Schifrin’s first play, Sweet and Sour, will have staged readings April 25 and 28 at Z Space in San Francisco. “Theatre is the place you want to balance mystery with clarity —and what it means to eat, to be nourished and how we nourish each other is a bit of a mystery,” he said.
Does he have a first novel tucked in a drawer somewhere? He does. He describes it as “a comedy about chess, opera and orthodontia.” Excerpts have been published “here and there,” but Schifrin now thinks the subject matter may be too broad. “Because my short stories are winning awards, I am now writing a ‘memel’ — half memoir and half novel — that is 300 very short stories. Each starts with a hashtag. It’s bizarre, but it’s also fun.”