Steve J. Stern (born 1947) is an American author from Memphis, Tennessee. Much of his work draws inspiration from Yiddish folklore.

Biography

Stern was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1947, the son of a grocer. He left Memphis in the 1960s to attend college, then to travel the US and Europe and ending on a hippie commune in the Ozarks. He went on to study writing in the graduate program at the University of Arkansas. Stern subsequently moved to London, England, before returning to Memphis in his thirties to accept a job at a local folklore center. There he learned about the city's old Jewish ghetto, The Pinch, and began to steep himself in Yiddish folklore. He published his first book, the story collection Isaac and the Undertaker's Daughter, which was based in The Pinch, in 1983. It won the Pushcart Writers' Choice Award and acclaim from some notable critics, including Susan Sontag, who praised the book's "brio ... whiplash sentences ... energy and charm..." Stern's 2000 collection The Wedding Jester won the National Jewish Book Award in 1999, and his novel The Angel of Forgetfulness was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post.

Works