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Marjorie Agosín

Marjorie Agosín is an award-winning Chilean Jewish poet, memoirist, novelist, literary critic, editor, educator, and human rights activist. Her work, which she writes in Spanish, is widely translated into English and other languages. She is a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Wellesley College.

Myriam Moscona

Myriam Moscona is a Sephardic Mexican poet, novelist, journalist, and translator. She is the author of Tela de sevoya/ Onioncloth, an award-wining novel about the Sephardic experience, reflecting on death and Ladino, and Ansina (Like that, 2015), a book of poetry entirely written in Judeo-Spanish.

Alejandra Pizarnik

With a vast body of work that includes books of poetry, prose works, essays, and diaries, Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina, 1936-1972) stands out as one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century Latin American poetry.

Erica Jong

Erica Jong is an American writer most famous for her bestselling novel Fear of Flying (1973). Sometimes controversial in her role as a media celebrity, Jong has published novels, poetry collections, memoirs, works of literary criticism, and literary anthologies, most often focusing on the explicit expression of women’s sexuality and neglected or untold stories of contemporary and historical women.

Anita Diamant

Anita Diamant is a novelist, feminist, and liberal Jew who has written five novels, the best known of which is The Red Tent (1997), made into an American television miniseries (2014). She is the author of many books Jewish self-help books, the best known of which is The New Jewish Wedding. She is the founding president of Mayyim Hayyim, the Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center.

Carolivia Herron

Carolivia Herron is a retired professor, children’s book author, novelist, and librettist who lives in Washington, D.C., and works with the Epicentering the National Mall Coalition. Much of her work traces patterns of shared trauma and convergence between Blackness and Jewishness, from the late fifteenth-century Jewish expulsions from Spain and Portugal, to the Atlantic slave trade, to the Holocaust and contemporary racism and antisemitism.

Ronit Matalon

Ronit Matalon was an Israeli writer of Egyptian heritage who wrote and published in Hebrew. She was the author of numerous works of fiction and essays and worked for many years as a journalist. Her work touches on Mizrahi identity, family, gender, and politics, and incorporates visual elements as well as cultural criticism.

Ana María Shua

Ana María Shua is an Argentine writer and screen writer who is internationally known as a specialist in short stories, in particular micro fiction tales, which are stories of just two or three lines of extension. She is well known in the Hispanic world as the Queen of the Microstory and employs her writing to narrate various aspects of the Jewish experience.

Cora Wilburn

Cora Wilburn was one of the most prolific American Jewish women writers of her time. Much of her work appeared in secular and Spiritualist publications, but during her final decades she published poetry in Jewish publications. Her autobiographical novel, Cosella Wayne, published serially in 1860, is the first coming-of-age novel to depict Jews in the United States.

Nancy Florence Keesing

Nancy Keesing was an influential figure on the Australian literary scene, not only as an author, editor, and critic, but also as an advocate and administration. She wrote poetry and ensured the preservation of nineteenth-century Australian songs and rhymes.

EL Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg is best remembered from her many beloved children’s novels, including The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizbeth, and The View from Saturday. Her novels and her characters reflect the angst of growing up in a middle-class world and finding your way, no matter where you come from.

Dorit Rabinyan

Dorit Rabinyan was born in Israel in 1972 to a family that emigrated from Iran. She is an acclaimed and popular author whose writings highlight her Jewish/Persian heritage and provide a critique of the position of women and the effects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on individuals.

Pulcellina of Blois

Pulcellina was a prominent and powerful Jewish moneylender in twelfth-century Blois. In 1171, she was burned at the stake with mother than 30 other Jews on the false accusation of murdering a Christian boy.

Twenty-First Century Jewish Literature by Women in the US

Twenty-first-century Jewish women’s writing in the United States is wide-ranging in genre and topic. In this body of literature, we can find insightful and nuanced stories of contemporary American life as well as fiction that delves into lost or forgotten Jewish histories. From a female Spinoza to a female golem, a strong feminist ethic is pervasive in these writings.

Jamaica Kincaid

Born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson, Jamaica Kincaid is a Jewish Afro-Caribbean author. She was sent to the United States from her birthplace in Antigua at the age of sixteen and became a writer while living in the United States.

Judith Katzir

Yehudit Katzir (b. 1963) is an Israeli author who emerged as a leading female voice in what had been a male-dominated literary field until the 1980s. Her novels and short stories are noted for their idiosyncratic and lyrical language, as well as their focus on female identity and treatment of taboo themes.

Emma Wolf

Author of five novels and numerous short stories, Emma Wolf was a pioneering Jewish American writer whose works were widely read and discussed within and outside the American Jewish community.

Episode 48: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells (Transcript)

Episode 48: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells (Transcript)

Episode 48: A Ceiling Made of Eggshells

Author Gail Carson Levine is famous for writing retellings of classic fairy tales with a modern twist—like her best-selling novel Ella Enchanted—but her most recent book, A Ceiling Made of Eggshells, takes readers back to a real time and place. It's set in Spain in the decade leading up to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Ten-year-old Loma's Jewish family is in a unique position. Her financier grandfather has a special, though tense, relationship with the king and queen, and Loma soon finds herself at the center of events that determine the Jewish community’s future. JWA talks with Gail Carson Levine about how she did her research for the book and what motivated her to write it.

An interviewee shakes hands with an interviewer. Another interviewer sits beside them.

"Planting Seeds": A Writer's Job Interview

Lilah Peck

Of all the interview questions I’d prepared for, I didn’t think of this one: "Why are you a writer?”

Topics: Writing, Fiction
Ritu Weds Chandni Book Cover

Through the Window: Interview with Author Ameya Narvankar

Ambika Sambasivan

As part of the Association of Jewish Libraries’ program Through the Window: A Diversity Exchange, we interview Ameya Narvankar, author of LGBTQ children's book Ritu Weds Chandni.

Episode 41: Coming of Age with Judy Blume (Transcript)

Episode 41: Coming of Age with Judy Blume (Transcript)

Episode 41: Coming of Age with Judy Blume

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Judy Blume's classic teen novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a story that normalizes the experiences of teenage girls: what it’s like to have your first period, your first bra, your first kiss… what it’s like to feel uncomfortable in your own body and confused about who you are. Margaret, who comes from an interfaith home, with one Jewish parent, goes through these teen rites of passage and also grapples with her religious identity. Judith Rosenbaum and Nahanni Rous recently re-read the book with their own pre-teen daughters, Ma'ayan and Shalvah.

Naamah Book Cover

Interview with Sarah Blake, Author of "Naamah"

Rebecca Long

Exclusively for JWA, author Sarah Blake discusses her novel Naamah.

Topics: Bible, Fiction
Jennifer Weiner / "Mrs. Everything" cover

An Interview with Jennifer Weiner, Author of "Mrs. Everything"

Dina Adelsky

Exclusively for JWA, Jennifer Weiner discusses her book Mrs. Everything.

Topics: Fiction

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