Eldad Cohen was born and grew up in Jerusalem. He has an MA in clinical psychology from Tel Aviv University and he lives and works as a psychologist in Tel Aviv. His military service as a combat soldier (1983-86) deeply affected him and found its way into some of his short stories. Cohen has written three plays, three books of adult fiction, and one book for children. His play Repertory Theatre (2012) received awards in major theatre festivals all over the world, including the Edinburgh Fringe, and Cohen won Playwright of the Year at the Israeli Fringe Theatre Golden Hedgehog Awards (2013). Other awards include: Ministry of Culture Prize for debut works for Look At Me (1998); Best Play and Best Playwright, International Festival of Plays for children in Haifa for Summer Holiday (2004). Wake Up, Mom is Cohen’s first novel. Published in 2019, it became an immediate bestseller. It was selected as one of the recommended books of the year by the Ministry of Education, and has been adapted for the stage by Cohen and Dori Parnes.
Milton Cohen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has published scholarly books on E. E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, modernist groups, and three books relating literature to political themes of the 1930s and 1940s. Cohen has also published the e-book American Glimpses, comprising three plays about the 1930s and 1940s. “Dog Tags” is the concluding story of a book-in-progress, Silverman, the Soldier. Cohen is presently living in Richardson, Texas.
Irena Dousková (the author) is a novelist, poet, playwright, and screenwriter. At home and abroad, she is best known for her tragicomic trilogy: B. Proudew (translated by Melvyn Clarke, Pálava Publishing, 2016), Oněgin Was a Rusky (translated by Melvyn Clarke, Pálava Publishing, 2018), and Darda (as yet untranslated into English). She is the author of ten books of fiction, and more than 100,000 copies of her books have been sold in the Czech Republic alone. Her books have appeared (or are due to appear) in 15 languages.
Michel Fais was born in Northern Greece (Komotini) in 1957 and lives and works in Athens. He has published seven novels, four novellas, one short story collection, two plays, and two photographic albums. He is the editor of the literary supplement of the Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper and he teaches creative writing at the Greek Open University, the University of Western Macedonia, and the “Sxoli” Creative writing seminars by Patakis Publishers. In 2000 he was awarded the National Short Story Prize. His work has been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Czech and Chinese. His plays have been staged by Roula Paterakis, Thodoris Gkonis, Lilly Meleme, Pericles Choursoglou, and Alexia Kaltsiki. He has co-written screenplays with Nikos Panayiotopoulos and presented his photographs in solo exhibitions. In 2021, Yale University Press (the Margellos World Republic of Letters) published Fais’ Mechanisms of Loss (including the novellas Lady Cortisol and Aegypius Monachus), translated by David Connolly.
Barak Hamdani was born and raised in Israel. As an avid reader he was always intrigued by the development of the characters and the story plots in novels. So much so that he decided to tip his hand into the art of creating literature. He first published a poetry book called Bodily Confinement in 2003. He then went on to publish his first novel, Dust, in 2006 with Keter Publications. His second novel, Yellow Rose, that handles the delicate balance between satire and sorrow in the WW II, came out in 2013 with Zmora Bitan Publications. Barak currently lives with his wife and two kids in Denver, Colorado.
Varda Hurvitz immigrated to Israel with her parents when she was only five months old. She published stories in newspaper supplements for youth and was awarded the Bialik Prize for Children when she was in grade four. She is the author of bestselling books about romantic travel and the novel Mamma's Bible (published by Yediot Books Publishing). Hurvitz is a veteran journalist. She has published wide-ranging interviews and magazine articles in Israel’s largest daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronot and in the women’s magazine Laisha. Around six years ago she left journalism to devote herself to her novel writing.
Lawrence Kurlandsky, MD is a retired pediatric pulmonologist/immunologist who has a long-standing interest in Jewish folk stories and midrash. Over the years, during free time at medical meetings or family vacations, he has been moved to write stories that capture his thoughts about people or locations with an attachment to Jewish ideas. This story came about from his knowledge of the medical literature, his experience as a pediatrician, and his knowledge of Morse code as a former amateur (ham) radio operator.
Tehila Lieberman’s debut short story collection, Venus in the Afternoon, received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. Her novel, "The Last Holy Man," was recently a finalist for the U.K.’s Exeter Novel prize. Tehila’s individual stories have been awarded the Stanley Elkin Memorial Prize, the Rick Demarinis Short Fiction Prize and the U.K.'s Bristol Short Story Prize and have appeared in many literary journals. Her non-fiction has appeared in Salon.com, Eretz Acheret and Lilith. Originally from New York, Tehila completed her BA in English Literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MA in Psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School in New York. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she consults as a writing coach for Harvard Business School.
Ida Maze (1893-1962; pronounced MAA-zeh; also rendered as Maza and Massey) was an important figure in the world of Yiddish literature. After emigrating from White Russia, she lived briefly in New York City and then settled in Montreal. In addition to Dineh she wrote four books of poetry: A mame (A Mother, 1931), Lider far kinder (Poems for Children, 1936), Naye lider (New Poems, 1941), and Vaksn mayne kinderlekh: muter un kinder-lider (My Children Grow: Mother and Children’s Poems, 1954), which was awarded the prize in children’s literature by the Congress for Jewish Culture in 1955.
Michael Posner is an award-winning writer, playwright, and journalist, and the author or coauthor of nine previous books. These include the bestselling Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years, Vol. 1, and From This Broken Hill, Vol. 2, as well as the Mordecai Richler biography The Last Honest Man and the Anne Murray autobiography All of Me, both of which were national bestsellers. He was Washington Bureau Chief for Maclean’s magazine and also managing editor of the Financial Times of Canada. He later spent sixteen years as a senior writer with The Globe and Mail.
Gina Roitman, living in Quebec’s Lower Laurentians, works remotely as a memoir-writing coach. The excerpt published here is from her first novel, Don’t Ask, which will be published soon by Guernica. Roitman is also the author of the short story collection, Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth; the co-author of Midway to China and Beyond; and the subject of the award-winning documentary My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines including Poetica, Wherever I Find Myself, Moment, the Forward, and carte-blanche. She is currently editing an anthology featuring the essays and stories of 14 daughters of Holocaust survivors.
Luize Valente is a Brazilian Portuguese writer, screenwriter, and broadcast journalist. Her books published in Portuguese include: Israel Routes & Roots (1999), The Secret of the Shrine(2012),A Square in Antwerp (2015), Sonata in Auschwitz (2017), and Do tempo em que voyeur precisava de binóculos (2019; no title in English). Her documentaries include: Paths of Memory: The Trajectory of the Jews in Portugal (2002) and The Star Hidden in the Backlands (2005), exhibited in more than 15 national and international film festivals. All her works deal with cultural and historical Jewish issues, such as the Inquisition, World War II, and refugees. Her books have been published in Brazil, Portugal, France, Italy and Poland. www.luizevalente.com
Anne (Hannah) Viderman (1899-1994) was born in the town of Oushitza in Podolia (now Stara Ushytsya, Ukraine), fled Russia with her family during the Revolution, moved to Bessarabia and Romania with her husband, and immigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1924. She published regularly in Der Keneder odler (The Canadian Eagle), Canada’s leading Yiddish newspaper. She also published two collections of short stories, humorous sketches, and memoirs: Umetiker shmeykhl (Sad Smile) (1946) and Alte heym un kinder yorn (Old Home and Childhood, 1960). Two of her autobiographical articles from Umetiker shmeykhl were published in English translation as “A Fiddle” in the 2007 anthology, Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers.
Julie Wiener is the communications director for a Jewish nonprofit. She worked for more than two decades as a reporter and editor, writing for such publications as The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, New York Sun, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. From 2006-2011, she wrote “In the Mix,” a column and blog about intermarried life for the New York Jewish Week. She lives in Jackson Heights, New York, with her husband and daughters. “Leaving Egypt (Passover 5752)” is excerpted from Julie’s unpublished (for now) novella, “Hooker Beach.” Another excerpt, “Blessed Is the Name” was published in November in the Jewish Literary Journal.
Nurit Zarchi was born in Jerusalem in 1941 and grew up at Kibbutz Geva. She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Zarchi has worked as a journalist and held creative writing workshops for children and adults. Zarchi has published novels, short stories, several books of poetry, a collection of essays and over 100 books for children. She has received every major Israeli award for children and youth literature, including the Bialik Prize (1999), the Ze'ev Prize (five times), four IBBY Honor Citations, the Education Minister`s Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2005) and the Amichai Prize (2006). Her books have been published abroad in ten languages. In 2021 she received the Israel Prize for literature.
Richard Zimler’s novels have been translated into 23 languages and have appeared on bestseller lists in 12 countries. His new novel, The Incandescent Threads, will be published in the summer of 2022 by Parthian Books. The Incandescent Threads has already been published in Portuguese and was named one of the Books of the Year by the two major bookstore chains in Portugal, where Richard has lived since 1990. It was also a Number 1 bestseller there. Richard’s previous novels include The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Hunting Midnight, Guardian of the Dawn, The Seventh Gate and The Lost Gospel of Lazarus. His website is: www.zimler.com.
