My guest today is journalist Rebecca Clarren. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, High Country News, The Nation, and Indian Country Today. For her reporting, she's won a Hillman Prize, received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and earned multiple grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. But as you'll hear in our conversation, she's much more than a journalist.

Her debut novel, which we touch on, is Kickdown, which was shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize. Clarren is also a published poet; her work has appeared in North American Review, Catamaran, CutBank, and Poetry Northwest.

We spend most of our time talking about The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, an extraordinary book in which she turns her journalistic eye on her own story—and her family's. It was named a Best Book of 2023 by several publications, won the Will Rogers Medallion Award, and was shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award and the Great Plains Book Award.

Rebecca and I talk about Jewish identity and values, and how those shape her work. She has a passion for amplifying marginalized and silenced voices—and for uncovering the stories that get buried beneath the dominant narrative. We talk about storytelling, contested truth, and what it means to hold multiple perspectives at once.

We also talk powerfully about grief and loss, and how they've informed her life and her work. Israel and Gaza come up because we're talking about competing narratives and moral urgency—and she offers a striking framework for balancing truth and compassion, rooted in learning with her rabbi.

It's a rich conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. This is my conversation with Rebecca Clarren.

The Genesis is created, produced and edited by Rabbi Joshua Rose and is supported by Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture. Theme music composed by Rabbi Joshua Rose

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Links & Show Notes

Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org

Rebecca's website: https://www.rebecca-clarren.com/

Indian Land Tenure Foundation: https://iltf.org/

Peter Beinart's Being Jewish Adrer the Destruction of Gaza: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/775348/being-jewish-after-the-destruction-of-gaza-by-peter-beinart/