On Aug. 3, @michaelchabon tweeted the following to his 16,000 followers: “Remember carob? What was that all about?”

Aaron Alpert, an American Jew from Los Angeles, and Latishya Steele, an African American non-Jew from Brooklyn, make a perhaps unlikely Israeli folk dance teaching duo. Neither is Israeli or speaks Hebrew. But both are extremely passionate about Israeli dance.

Through meticulous research, including interviews with Roth’s confidants, former flames and enemies, Blake Bailey reveals a fiercely ambitious, funny and obsessive man who put his commitment to “words, words, words” — one of his mantras — above everything and everyone else.

For so many Bay Area artists, the pandemic has brought with it numerous personal and professional challenges, from lost gigs (and therefore lost income) to feeling lost creatively. But it has also opened up new opportunities for collaborating, teaching and performing online, and it has allowed many to reach wider audiences than they normally might thanks to the internet.