Irna Phillips created hugely popular soap operas for radio and television and introduced plotlines that shaped the format of many soaps that followed.

Female Yishuv writers have often been ignored in discussions of Jewish literature from the period. As the sometimes-melancholy tone and escapist themes of their writing show, these women struggled to escape the margins in pre-state Palestine. Nonetheless, the works of these female writers offer important insights into the lives of Yishuv women and paved the way for contemporary women writers.

Elisheva Carlebach is Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society, and Co-Director, Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University. She is the author of The Pursuit of Heresy (National Jewish Book Award); Divided Souls: Jewish Converts to Christianity in Early Modern German Lands; Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (AJS Schnitzer Prize); and Confronting Modernity: 1750-1880, vol. 6 in The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. She has held fellowships at the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers, the Katz Center at University of Pennsylvania, and the Tikvah Center at NYU Law School. She served as Editor of the AJS Review and as President of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Born in Germany, Ruth Peggy Sophie Parnass was sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. Parnass became a journalist, actress, court reporter, feminist activist, and writer. Parnass combines her private and public lives in her writing, whether on her childhood under Nazi rule in Hamburg and as an exile in Sweden, on women's issues, or on political matters.

Women played a central role in the development and evolution of Old Yiddish literature. Old Yiddish literature was published with women’s literacy in mind, most nominally for women’s religious practice and learning.

Bette Midler went from canning pineapples at a factory in Honolulu to starring in over 20 films, releasing two dozen records, and touring the world with record-breaking live concert performances. Midler got her start at a gay bathhouse in New York, where she developed the campy and confident persona “The Divine Miss M.” Her career in show business spans decades, old and new media, and musical genres.