Gail Benick is a writer living in Toronto. She teaches at Sheridan College in the field of Diaspora literature and memoir. Her recent publications include essays on the practice of digital storytelling in higher education.
Erika Dreifus lives in New York City. She is the author of Quiet Americans: Stories, a collection inspired largely by the experiences of her paternal grandparents, German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. Quiet Americans was named an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title (for outstanding Jewish literature) as well as a Notable Book (The Jewish Journal) and a Top Small-Press Book (Shelf Unbound). "Rio, 1940" is an excerpt from her novel manuscript, The Haguenauer Line. Please visit www.erikadreifus.com to learn more about Erika and her writing.
Sheindl Franzus-Garfinkle (1899-1957) was born in Bershad, Ukraine. She studied medicine at the University of Odessa and lived in Belz, Romania, before settling in Montreal in 1922. The most important of her books is Rochl, a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, published in 1942 in Montreal.
Canadian Gila Green is a writer, editor, and EFL teacher. As the daughter of a Yemenite-Israeli father and an Ashkenazi-Canadian mother, she often writes about the immigrant experience including dislocation, alienation, and racism. She is the author of Passport Control (S&H Publishing), White Zion (Cervena Barva Press, 2019) and King of the Class (NON Publishing, 2013). Please visit: www.gilagreenwrites.com
Susan Kleinman’s short stories have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Inkwell, Troika and The William and Mary Review, and her articles, essays and book reviews have been published in The Forward, Gourmet, The Jerusalem Report, Metropolitan Home, Redbook, New York, The New York Times, and dozens of other publications in the U.S. and abroad. Ms. Kleinman was a Gurfein Fellow at Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught writing workshops for middle-school and high-school students and adults. She lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and their children.
Hadara Lazar was born and grew up in Haifa. She holds a BA in history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and also studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. After spending a number of years abroad, Lazar worked with B’Tselem, a human rights organization, during the first Intifada. Lazar has published five novels and two non-fiction books, the most recent this past summer, Six Singular Characters, the Thirties: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which was very well-received. Out of Palestine, 1940-1948, which came out in New York in 2011 (Atlas & Co., Publishers), focuses on the last years of the British Mandate as experienced variously by Jews, Arabs and the British. It was the research for that book that led to her novel, A Local Affair. Lazar is also the translator of Sartre's major novel, Nausea, into Hebrew.
Carol Lipszyc's book of lyrical and autobiographical poems, Singing Me Home, was published by Inanna Press, York University, 2010. Stories on children in the Shoah from the collection, Saviour Shoes and Other Stories, have appeared in Midstream and Parchment. As an educator and scholar, Carol has published in international journals in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.K. Her Literacy/ESL Reader with chants, People Express, was published by Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1996. Carol is currently an Assistant Professor at State University of New York, Plattsburgh teaching English teacher education and creative writing.
Yael Medini was born in Israel. She served in the army and lived on a kibbutz. She received a B.A. from Hunter College and an M.A. from New York University. Over the years she published (in Hebrew, of course) stories and novels for children and adults. Her novel for young adults, The Boy I Did Not Know, won prizes from Yad Va’shem and the Ministry of Education and Culture. She has also published stories in English in the New York based monthly, Midstream, and in a collection of stories, Children of Israel, Children of Palestine, published by Simon and Schuster. Recently her short story, “Suddenly, All At Once,” translated by Zeva Shapiro, was published by the online journal Melusine. Four of her radio dramas were broadcasted on Israeli radio. One of them – “Gitta's Lamp” (translated into English) – was short-listed by Channel Four of the BBC. She wrote the libretto for Oasis, an opera for children composed by Dr. Tsippi Fleischer, which was performed in Karlsruhe, Germany. Yael Medini is married, is a mother and a grandmother.
Robin Roger writes fiction, essays and book reviews which have appeared in publications including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Literary Review of Canada, Moment Magazine and others. She is an associate editor of The Literary Review of Canada, and a founder of, and contributing editor to, Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts and Humanities. She is also a psychotherapist and the mother of two young adult children. Her other pursuits include playing piano, meditation, and voice lessons. She lives in Toronto.
Dalia Rosenfeld is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Atlantic Monthly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, Zeek, and Moment Magazine. She is currently living in Israel with her husband and three children.
Ana María Shua was born in Buenos Aires in 1951. She has published books in various genres and is the recipient of many literary awards. Three of her novels and three of her books of microfiction have been translated into English and published in the United States. Among her many international recognitions, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel, The Book of Memories. Shua’s novel, Los amores de Laurita (Laurita’s Loves), from which the following excerpt comes, was converted into a motion picture. Shua is recognized as one of the principal Latin American cultivators of the microrrelato, a genre of extremely short fiction. Her fiction for adults and children has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages, including French, Chinese, English, Italian, German, Korean, and Portuguese.
Rochelle F. Singer is a writer both by professional and personal choice. For years, she has been marketing science and technology through slogans, scripts, articles and papers. More recently, she began writing about her own lifecycle experiences in pieces published in The Jerusalem Post, HaAretz and The Times of Israel. Today, she has turned to the genre of short stories to express the yearnings that make people more alike than different. Ms. Singer received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, an MFA from Brooklyn College, and her inspiration from The Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan.
Miri Varon was born in Rehovot, Israel in 1944. She holds a PhD in Hebrew literature from Bar-Ilan University. She has published short stories and articles in literary journals including Moznayim, Aley Siach and Iton 77. Varon is active in the fields of education and culture, and lectures at Tel Aviv University and at the Kibbutzim Teachers’ College. She was awarded the Tel Aviv Foundation Award for Wandering Bride (1988).
