Biography
Allan Appel is an award-winning novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, and cultural writer whose work explores Jewish life and history, spirituality, mortality, memory, and the often-absurd human search for meaning. Born in Chicago in 1946 and raised in Los Angeles, Appel has published fourteen books, including eight novels, three collections of poetry, a biography, a book on botany, and A Portable Apocalypse, an anthology of erudite and humorous quotations about the end of the world.
His newest novel, The Holocaust Runner, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press in 2026. Set in contemporary Berlin, the novel follows a middle-aged American jogger who travels to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, where he runs while reciting the names of the dead. As his unusual act of remembrance draws the attention of the authorities and neo-Nazis, the novel develops into an unconventional meditation on Holocaust memory, antisemitism, history, faith, mortality, and the responsibility of the living to remember the dead. Combining literary fiction, dark comedy, and philosophical inquiry, The Holocaust Runner asks what it means to remember the past—and whether remembrance can become an active form of engagement with it.
Appel's novels include Club Revelation, High Holiday Sutra, The Rabbi of Casino Boulevard, The Hebrew Tutor of Bel Air, and The Book of Norman. High Holiday Sutra received a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and The Rabbi of Casino Boulevard was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. The Book of Norman, a comedy set in Beach Boys-era Los Angeles, explores angels, the afterlife, and the complicated relationship between Jewish and Mormon traditions.
His most recent poetry collection, Be Wary of the Elderly, published by Finishing Line Press in 2025, takes a wry and affectionate look at aging, friendship, mortality, memory, family, and the everyday absurdities of growing older. Its subjects range from aardvarks and encyclopedias to losing friends and playing hidden-picture games with grandchildren.
As a playwright, Appel's work has been produced in New York, Chicago, New Haven, and Provincetown. Dear Heartsey, a staged adaptation of the letters of Abigail Franks, a colonial New Yorker, was commissioned by the American Jewish Historical Society and presented with Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach. Stealing Home, a play about Major League Baseball player and early atomic spy Moe Berg, was developed at the Actors Studio in New York. His play The Excommunication of Mrs. Eaton, a biographical drama about an early female religious figure in Puritan New England, received the first Connecticut Heritage Productions play award.
Appel's writing has appeared in The National Jewish Monthly, The Progressive, National Lampoon, and other publications. For more than two decades, he has been a reporter and staff writer for the New Haven Independent, writing about the people, history, culture, politics, and religious life of New Haven and its surrounding communities.
His career has also included extensive work with cultural, educational, and nonprofit institutions. He served as Director of Institutional and Foundation Giving at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City and has worked as a writer for organizations including the New York Public Library, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and the American Museum of Natural History.
Appel holds degrees in writing and comparative literature from Columbia University and the City University of New York and attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He has taught writing and literature in New York City schools, at the City University of New York, and at Upsala College in New Jersey. He has received two Connecticut state arts fellowships in fiction. Appel lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where his long career as a novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, and cultural writer continues to draw on his enduring interests in history, religion, Jewish life, memory, mortality, and the human capacity to find humor and meaning in difficult subjects.