Author Iddo Gefen is a writer and neurocognitive researcher, exploring how storytelling can improve our understanding of the human mind. Gefen worked 

in neurocognitive research at the The Immersive Media & Cognition Group in Sagol Brain Institute, Sourasky Medical Center and at Tel Aviv University. He is currently pursuing PhD in Neuroscience at Columbia University.  

Jerusalem Beach is Gefen's debut collection, and recipient of the Israeli Minister of Culture Award (2017); Iddo won the National Library of Israel “Pardes” Scholarship for young writers (2019). Jerusalem Beach has been published in the US, Canada and Korea, and will be published in a few more languages, including Chinese and Dutch. Film and TV rights to several stories were sold to leading Hollywood production companies. Gefen's new novel is Mrs. Lilienblum's Cloud Factory.

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Iddo Gefen’s short story, “Debby’s Dream House,” from the collection Jerusalem Beach, is being adapted into a movie by Charlie Kaufman, starring Eddie Redmayne, Tessa Thompson, and Patsy Ferran.

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ABOUT MRS. LILIENBLUM’S CLOUD FACTORY

A comic novel for fans of Adelle Waldman about a tech startup that turns sand into rain clouds from Sami Rohr prize winner Iddo Gefen.

Our story opens with Mrs. Lilienblum discovered drinking a martini in a crater in the Israeli desert. Eli, her adult son, tries to understand what happened to his wacky mother, while he also tackles the legend of a missing hiker named McMurphy, and whether he might be in love with Tamara, a visitor to his family’s hostel on the edge of a crater.

The story races forward as the Lilienblum family builds a company around Eli’s mother’s invention and makes comedy out of startup culture, the obsession with company valuation and funding, the secrets families keep, romantic and family love–all with humor, warmth and compassion.

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