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Sarah Groustra Headshot 2023

Where Are They Now? RVF Alum Sarah Groustra

Sarah Biskowitz

JWA chats with Sarah Groustra for our series of interviews with Rising Voices Fellowship alums to mark the 10th anniversary of the fellowship. 

Topics: Non-Fiction, Plays
Anna Ziegler Headshot

7 Questions For Anna Ziegler

Sarah Groustra

JWA talks to playwright Anna Ziegler. 

Topics: Theater, Poetry, Plays

Merle Feld

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Merle Feld on July 19, 2000, in Northampton, Massachusetts, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Feld recounts her upbringing in Brooklyn, her involvement in the Jewish community, her work in facilitating Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, and the profound impact of her activism on her life and career as a writer and public figure.

Rain Pryor’s One-Woman Play “Fried Chicken and Latkes” Earns NAACP Theatre Award

February 21, 2005

On February 21, 2005, Jewish comedian, actress, singer, and writer Rain Pryor received an NAACP Theatre Award for her one-woman autobiographical play, “Fried Chicken and Latkes.” In the play, Pryor explores her experiences with racism growing up Black and Jewish in Beverly Hills, CA, as well as her complex relationship with her father, the late comedian Richard Pryor.

Aida Bortnik

Aída Bortnik was an Argentine journalist, dramaturge, and screenwriter who wrote the first Argentine screenplay nominated for an Academy Award (“The Truce,” 1974), an award she later won for best foreign film in 1986 (“The Official Story”). Bortnik was also the first Argentine to pen a screenplay that addressed the military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the first Latin American admitted as a permanent member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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.

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.

Joan Micklin Silver, 1935–2020

Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors. 

Tovah Feldshuh

Tovah Feldshuh set a record for the longest running one-woman show with her starring role in Golda’s Balcony, a Broadway play about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Paula Vogel

Although she made her Broadway debut with Indecent in 2016, playwright Paula Vogel has long been hailed for her unflinching exploration of taboo topics, from the AIDS crisis to child abuse.
"Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers"

Women Of Influence: What Macbeth Taught Us About Women In Power

Tess Kelly

That Scottish Shakespearian tragedy, so shrouded in mystery that it is unlucky even to say its name, gave society new ideas about women that have stayed with us since 1606, when the play debuted in London.  

Topics: Plays, Poetry
Playbill Image for Shades, a 2016 play by Paula J. Caplan

Shades and Stories: An Interview with Paula J. Caplan

Bella Book

The people who make stories a central focus of their life come in all genders, colors, creeds, and professions. JWA was lucky enough to speak with Paula J. Caplan, who first championed women’s stories as a clinical and research psychologist,and has now turned her attention, as a playwright, to the struggles that returning veterans face. Her newest play, Shades, is at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York until December 17th.

Topics: Plays

Lillian Mellen Genser

After the narrowly averted disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lillian Mellen Genser decided to train people to think differently about conflict from early childhood onward.
2015-2016 Rising Voices Fellow Eliana Gayle-Schneider

Why I Write

Eliana Gayle-Schneider

Two driving forces in my life are creativity and passion. These qualities have always gone hand in hand. As I have grown through the years, my love for writing and my passion for activism have blended into one tremendous, creative, passionate, one-act play.

Sarah Treem

Television writer Sarah Treem’s work with Hagai Levi, adapting In Treatment for an American audience, led to their collaboration on the Golden Globe-winning The Affair.
A Scene from the Play "dry bones rising"

An Interview with Playwright Celia Raker

Etta King Heisler

Over Boston’s long winter, I shared Shabbat dinner with a friend-of-a-friend who, unbeknownst to me, is a talented poet and playwright. In addition to winning a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship this spring, Cecelia Raker’s play dry bones rising made its first full-length, professional debut in May at the Venus Theatre in Laurel, MD.

Topics: Theater, Plays

Lisa Edelstein

An actress with a long history of activism, House star Lisa Edelstein organized her first protest at age sixteen as a cheerleader for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals, outraged that the cheerleaders were forced to flirt in bars.

Yavilah McCoy

Yavilah McCoy is the founder of Ayecha, a nonprofit Jewish organization that provided Jewish diversity education and advocacy for Jews of color in the United States.

Death of writer Sarah Brandstein Smith, “Queen of the shundroman"

April 29, 1968
“Sarah B. Smith is the most beloved Jewish newspaperwoman, the first who ever served as a reporter on a Jewish paper, and the one who has triumphantly overcome the misgivings of editors who mistrusted the abilities of a mere woman writer.”

Alice B. Toklas Moves In Permanently with Gertrude Stein

September 9, 1910
Alice Babette Toklas heard distinct chiming when she met Gertrude Stein.

Long-lost Poem by War Heroine Hannah Szenes is Found

September 2, 2012

A poem by WWII hero Hannah Szenes was discovered 68 years after her death.

Birth of novelist Jacqueline Susann

August 20, 1921

Jacqueline Susann was the first writer to have three consecutive novels hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Birth of Esther Broner, co-creator of "The Women’s Haggadah"

July 8, 1927

Esther Broner "made room for us at the table by creating a whole new one—a Seder table at which women’s voices were heard.”

Death of prolific screenwriter and novelist Vera Caspary

June 13, 1987

“Those who come after us may find it easier to assert independence, but will miss the grand adventure of having been born a woman in this century of change.” Screenwriter Vera Caspary

Cheryl Moch

Long before gay marriage became a reality, Cheryl Moch dared to dream a gay marriage fairy tale.

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