Molly Antopol. Photo: Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons.

Molly Antopol

Writer

Molly Antopol is an American writer who has captured the “everyday anxieties and complex past lives” of immigrant characters in various locales in her debut story collection, “The UnAmericans.”

The book won the 2015 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award as well as the 2015 Hadassah Magazine’s Harold U. Ribalow Prize for Jewish fiction.

Antopol’s characters range from a young Israeli journalist who lost a job in America during the economy crash; an absentee father in Communist-era Prague, who dissents from the political majority; and an actor who has been jailed during Los Angeles’ McCarthy era, among others.

Antopol herself has traveled widely in Eastern Europe; her family is originally from a tiny village called Antopol, a few hours from Minsk, in Belarus.