What makes life worthwhile?
An interview with Victoria writer Pauline Holdstock about What Endures, short fiction and humour.
About & career
Sheldon (Sheli) Teitelbaum
Senior Editor of BC BookWorld. Journalist, critic and anthologist based in Penticton, in British Columbia’s Okanagan.
From Penticton, Teitelbaum covers BC writers and books, with a particular interest in speculative literature. Montreal-born and educated, he brings a career in Canadian and international journalism to his work at BC BookWorld.
His Canadian honours include a Northern Lights Award for Excellence in Independent Journalism (second prize, 1998), for “The Call of the Wired” in Wired.
His reporting on Jewish and Israeli life and military affairs informs a wider engagement with culture: the imagined worlds of speculative fiction and the stories told in film and television. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, WIRED, Time Digital, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, the Montreal Gazette, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Report and Jewish Journal.
Years after helping found the Jewish Journal, he was called back as a roving senior writer to cover the 2001 Los Angeles mayoral race. His article “How Cookie Crumbled,” about Jacob “Cookie” Orgad, earned a Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in News Reporting.
He is a former senior writer for The Jerusalem Report and former Los Angeles Bureau Chief for Cinefantastique. With Emanuel Lottem, he co-edited Zion’s Fiction and More Zion’s Fiction. His reference contributions include The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Encyclopaedia Judaica.
He served on the editorial board of Fantasia 2000 and holds a BA in History from Concordia University, specializing in Modern Chinese history.
Writing from British Columbia
Trump and Canadian civil society
An interview with UBC political scientist Max Cameron about citizenship and polarization.
A career across places & forms
Origins, journalism & Fantasia 2000
Mainstream reporting, film & Jewish affairs
Literary history across generations
Writers, publishing & the BC literary world
Present Tense · Los Angeles correspondent
Los Angeles correspondent, c. 1986/87–1990, for the American Jewish Committee’s magazine of world Jewish affairs (1973–1990), edited by Murray Polner. The starting year is approximate, based on Teitelbaum’s recollection; the role is independently documented in 1989. His Harold Schulweis profile was later collected in Jewish Profiles (1991).
Magazine cover & identified contributionsPersonal pieces
Viva (Jewish) Las Vegas
Jewish life in the desert city.
A Foot in Three Countries
Montreal, Israel and California, told from personal experience.
College in Canada
Looking north with his son Adam.
Geekward Bound
Testing a connected life in the California desert.
Book Report: Too Many Authors
Reporting on his investigation of a disputed novel.
Adventures in Israel’s science-fiction scene
His first encounters with speculative fiction, from Montreal to Israel.