I met Joan Leegant the first time I attended a writer’s residency—in 2017—at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I was excited to read Leegant’s new short story collection, Displaced Persons, winner of the New American Fiction Prize, set half in Israel and half in America. Aside from elegant and accomplished writing, what grabbed me about these stories, especially the ones set in Israel, especially now, is the window into ordinary life. Israel has a large immigrant and refugee population; many people who live there have been displaced at one point or another. Meeting the characters in these stories, finding their humor and humanity on the page, was uplifting.