3rd Annual Miriam Chaikin
Writing Award
Jack Dowling and Elizabeth Lash

Date: April 17, 2019 at 7PM
At: Westbeth Community Room

Join us for the 3rd Annual Miriam Chaikin Writing Award Evening, with winners Jack Dowling, prose, and Elizbeth Lash, poetry, reading from their work.

Jack Dowling was a “country” boy from New Jersey when he moved to New York City to attend Cooper Union, where he studied with Robert Gwathmey and Morris Kantor.Jack’s early work as a painter was in abstraction, but his artwork later took a new direction, with compositions inspired by photos of family and friends.
He achieved recognition by the mid-sixties, selling and exhibiting his work in both group and solo shows. A highlight was “The Dominant Woman” show at the Finch College Museum of Art (Dec. ’68/Jan. ’69), which included artists Claes Oldenburg, Willem de Kooning, and Jim Dine, among others.
In the nineties, Jack turned to writing for creative expression. His stories have been published in the Hamilton Stone Review, the Barcelona Review, A&U magazine, American Writing, and CreamDrops
– from Profiles in Art by Terry Stoller. Read more here.

Elizabeth Lash is a NYC-based attorney who has written on a variety of subjects—from art law and ex-KGB agents to women engineers and corruption in Azerbaijan. Her poetry has appeared twice before at The Five-Two, and her non-fiction articles have been published by the Center for Art Law, the Holy Cross Journal of Law and Public Policy, Transparency International, the Engineering News-Record, and GetCrafty.com, among others.

Miriam Chaikin Foundation Writing Award was established in memory of Miriam Chaikin, a longtime Westbeth resident and prolific writer. Born in Palestine, Chaikin grew up in Brooklyn, and her childhood memories and life in a close-knit Jewish community are all themes represented in her writing. She worked earlier in her career as an editor of literature for young people, and most of her books are intended for children and youth. Her works include lushly illustrated retellings of Old Testament lessons, humorous stories of the misadventures of “Molly and Yossi” (based on her childhood and that of her beloved younger brother Joseph), and collections of poetry. The last two books she completed were for adults – Jewish Wisdom for Daily Life, and Jerusalem: An Informal Autobiography of the City. For Miriam/Molly/Chickie as she was known, the written word and the book were essential to her life and wellbeing.