Glenn Kurtz
Glenn Kurtz is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014), which was named a “Best Book of 2014” by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. The Los Angeles Times called the book “breathtaking,” and it has received high critical praise in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. A documentary film based on the book, "Three Minutes: A Lengthening," directed by Bianca Stigter, co-produced by Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen, and narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021. It was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2022 and has screened at festivals worldwide. In May 2022, it was awarded the inaugural Yad Vashem Award for Excellence in Holocaust Documentary Filmmaking. Glenn’s first book, Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), also received enthusiastic reviews from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.
A frequent public speaker, Glenn has presented keynote addresses at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington D.C.); the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies (University of Texas at Dallas); the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, Chapman University (Orange, CA); the Jewish Historical Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); The Wiener Library (London, U.K.); the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw, Poland), and at many other venues across the U.S. and internationally. For four years, he hosted “Conversations on Practice,” a discussion series about the writing process and the writer’s life. Guests included Patti Smith, Martin Amis, Jennifer Egan, Adam Gopnik, Francine Prose, Tom McCarthy, Dani Shapiro, and Rebecca Newberger-Goldstein, among many others.
Glenn is a 2019-2023 Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, Orange, CA, and the recipient of a 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. A graduate of Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music, he holds a PhD from ý in German Studies and Comparative Literature. He has taught at San Francisco State University, New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and ý.