Dr. Peter Alterman retired from the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2012 and from a biopharmaceutical industry collaborative program six years later. He’s published science fiction, literary fiction, mainstream fiction and literary criticism. A bibliography of his literary work may be found at www.peteralterman.com. He earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Denver, reads fiction for a literary journal, and serves as its non-fiction editor.
Hamutal Bar-Yosef is a well-known Israeli prize winner writer, poet, translator, and scholar. Her poems have been translated into many languages. She has published 16 collections of poetry, 6 books of literary research, a book of essays, a children's book, two collections of short stories, an autobiographical book and a historical novel (English
Tsilye Dropkin (the author) (1887-1956) was an acclaimed poet, prose writer, and painter. Born in White Russia, she came to the U.S. in 1912 and, with the exception of the years during the Great Depression, spent the rest of her life in New York. Dropkin began writing poetry in Russian, but by 1920 she was writing in Yiddish. Her work is often heralded for its frank exploration of the relationships between people and their erotic and emotional lives and passions. Only one book of her poetry appeared in her lifetime (In heysn vint / In the hot wind), but she also wrote a novel serialized in the Forverts in 1934 (Tsvey gefiln / Two feelings) and ten short stories that appeared in Tsukunft in the 1930s, including “The Factory.”
Rivkie Fried was born in Israel, raised in Tel Aviv and New York, and has lived in England for many years. As a journalist she covered the Middle East for Reuters News Agency and for radio, both in occupied Syria and Lebanon. She has published stories in American and British magazines, including Story Quarterly, Stand, and The Massachusetts Review. This extract is taken from her novel, The Wrong Sea. It tells the story of an Israeli family coming to terms with the death of its eldest son, a helicopter pilot shot down over Lebanon.
Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of Light Reflection Over Blues and of Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of the Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, twice a finalist for the Iowa Fiction Award, and a six-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Her stories have appeared in The Dr. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Glimmer Train, and anthologized in W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International anthology, Best Short Fictions, and elsewhere. Her PhD in English Literature focuses on minorities, gender, and trauma. She grew up in Israel and lives in Brazil.
Josh Kail is a writer of Jewish-themed satire. His Jewish satire, Medium page, From the Rebbitzman’s Desk, has been featured in The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). Josh’s writing addresses themes such as antisemitism, politics, congregational life, and being a rabbi’s spouse. Originally from the Philadelphia area, he now lives on the West Coast with his rabbi wife and two children. In his professional capacity as a PR professional, he has ghost-written for politicians and tech industry leaders. This is his Jewish Short Fiction Debut. Josh can be found on Twitter at @Jkail1, “America’s Rebbitzman.”
Wayne Karlin has published eight novels and three non-fiction books, as well as numerous short stories and articles. He has received five State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994 and 2004), the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999, the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in the Arts Award in 2005, and the 2019 Juniper Prize for Fiction. He was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/wayne_karlin
Yaron Regev is an author and translator. He is the author of two graphic novels, Ghosts of Love and Country (2019) and The Cave (2022), as well as an upcoming YA fantasy series called The Door Behind the Sun, the short play Until the Children Will Return, and several adult novels.
Margie Rynn is an American freelance writer who has been living in France for over 20 years. She is the author of Frommer’s EasyGuide to Paris, and has written for Time Out New York, Budget Travel, and EasyJet Inflight, as well as environmental organizations such as NRDC and the UN Environment Program. In a former New York life, she wrote and performed a one-woman-show about a girl from New Jersey who becomes a Flamenco dancer. This is an excerpt from an unpublished novel.
Ruth Spack, a retired professor of English, teaches writing in the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program at Brandeis University. Her scholarly publications include America’s Second Tongue, which was awarded the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize by the Modern Language Association. After a long and fulfilling career as an academic writer, she now focuses exclusively on creative writing. Her stories appear in Streetlight Magazine, bioStories, and Little Old Lady Comedy.
Daniel Victor’s writing features observant Jewish protagonists struggling to address the challenges of modernity while adhering to tradition. The story “King of the Ants” is taken from his unpublished collection of short fiction entitled Moti’s Bride. In addition to this collection, he has completed three novels. Dan will publish his first novel entitled The Evil Inclination in 2023. He lives in New York City with his wife and three adult children.
Deborah Zafer lives in London, where she works in the public sector by day, writes by night, and looks after her family and rabbit in the hours between. After many years of solitary writing, she has finally decided to be brave and start submitting her work to see what happens and join in the conversation. She can be found @deborahzafer on Twitter and at www.deborahzafer.com.
