For Jewish American Heritage Month, observed annually during the month of May, we asked our member magazines and presses to share with us some of the work by Jewish American writers that they recommend reading in celebration.
Poetry Collections
Naming a Hurricane by Madeline Artenberg
Pink Trees Press | 2023
Artenberg’s poetry collection explores “that double edge—dazzling human possibility, potential disappointment.”
If This is the Age We End Discovery by Rosebud Ben-Oni
Alice James Books | 2021
Ben-Oni’s poems “are precisely crafted, like a surgeon sewing a complicated stitch, moving through the multiverses of family, religion, and discovery itself.”
Perugia Press | 2002
Winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Poetry Prize, Braverman’s poetry collection “is unselfconsciously about the search for love and security in the face of grief and within the queer community.”
Love Nailed to the Doorpost by Richard Chess
University of Tampa Press | 2017
In Love Nailed to the Doorpost, Chess “offers poems and lyrical prose inspired and informed equally by the pleasures and pressures of everyday life and by sacred and secular texts.”
Every Transmission by Adam Deutsch
Fernwood Press | 2023
This debut poetry collection “is about the erosion of our mechanical relationships and the movement to natural forms.”
The Disappearing Letters by Carol Edelstein
Perugia Press | 2005
This poetry collection “is an instruction manual on how to pay very close attention while daydreaming.”
Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman
Alice James Books | 2019
In this collection, “captivating poems and visual art seek to bring comfort and solidarity to anyone living with Bipolar Disorder.”
Inside the Ghost Factory by Norman Finkelstein
Marsh Hawk Press | 2010
In this poetry collection, “Samuel Coleridge meets William Gibson and the result is a retro-Blakean myth for the age of Text and Tweet.”
Marsh Hawk Press was formerly distributed by SPD. Email to request this book directly from the publisher.
Thirty-Six/Two Lives: A Poetic Dialogue by Norman Finkelstein and Tirzah Goldenberg
Dos Madres Press | 2021
This collaboration is “a book of the Jewish past and the Jewish present, of ordinary life and of mystical apprehension.”
Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen by Elisheva Fox
Belle Point Press | 2023
“Part psalter, part Sapphic verse,” this debut poetry collection “evokes the spirit of Emily Dickinson while calling the reader to prayer for a life fully lived.”
To a New Era by Joanna Fuhrman
Hanging Loose Press | 2021
Fuhrman’s sixth poetry collection is “a fearless blend of the real and the surreal, the political and the personal, all with the marks of her own kind of accelerated dizzying style.”
End of the Business Day by Robert Hershon
Hanging Loose Press | 2019
According to Anselm Berrigan, Hershon “writes about aging in this totally disarming way,” and “the measure and humor of this poetry puts you right up into living experience as a moving foreground.”
Black Lawrence Press | 2022
In these poems, Hiton “turns to fictive spectacle—to narrative invention, sensory desires, and malleable landscapes—as a last gesture toward hope.”
Analog Poet Blues by Yeva Johnson
Black Lawrence Press | 2023
According to Ajuan Mance, Johnson “turns her unique gaze to the activities of daily life and all of its institutions, ideas, and relationships as she navigates the currents of her world.”
In Our Beautiful Bones by Zilka Joseph
Mayapple Press | 2021
In this poetry collection, Joseph “creates powerful collages from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, Scripture, world history and culture, literature, music, food, and current events.”
Many to Remember by Rachel Kaufman
Dos Madres Press | 2021
In her debut poetry collection, Kaufman “enters the archive’s unconscious to reveal the melodies hidden within the language of the past.”
40 Weeks by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
YesYes Books | 2023
These poems “embrace the bare and grotesque nature of pregnancy and childbirth as they consider how to mother a neurodivergent child while pregnant with another, rejecting a culture that views the body with shame.”
Walk with Me by Madeleine May Kunin
Green Writers Press | 2023
In this poetry collection, the “three-term Vermont governor invites the audience to step into her world, to slow down and find new serenity in older age and unexpected love.”
YesYes Books | 2022
In these poems, Melnick “dives head-first through concentric waves of personal and generational trauma with her trademark fearlessness.”
Black Ocean | 2023
This debut poetry “draws on the music and culture of flamenco to explore diasporic experience.”
Sleeping as Fast as I Can by Richard Michelson
Slant Books | 2023
Michelson’s poems “explore the boundaries between the personal and the political—and the deep connections between history and memory.”
Marsh Hawk Press | 2020
In this poetry collection, Newman revisits the Holocaust; Marge Piercy writes, “To make fresh powerful poems rooted in Shoah is amazing.”
Marsh Hawk Press was formerly distributed by SPD. Email to request this book directly from the publisher.
T’shuvah by Richard Jeffrey Newman
Fernwood Press | 2023
According to Nandana Dev Sen, “T’shuvah searches, with relentless beauty, for the truth of what we feel most deeply, pulsing with an awareness of loss as tangible as its celebration of faith, and of love.”
Searching for Home by Robert Pack
Slant Books | 2023
This poetry collection features “sequences of poems about three figures, each a seeker after some physical or conceptual home where uncertainties are overcome.”
It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out by Isaac Pickell
Black Ocean | 2023
This book is “a linguistically experimental and socially engaged collection of poems that examines questions of colorism within an economically driven world.”
There Are Still Woods by Hila Ratzabi
June Road Press | 2022
There Are Still Woods is “a radiant appraisal of life at the precipice of climate crisis and a haunting elegy for all we stand to lose.”
History of Gone by Lynn Schmeidler
Veliz Books | 2018
History of Gone is a collection of poems “inspired by the life and unsolved disappearance of Barbara Newhall Follett, a once-famous child prodigy writer of the early twentieth century.”
Veliz Books | 2024
This poetry collection “explores motherhood, the dissolution of a marriage, and grief through the lens of a shrinking pandemic space.”
Wave Books | 2022
The poems in this collection “invite readers to recall painterly constructions and news headlines.”
Novels and Short Fiction Collections
Regal House Publishing | 2019
In this novel for young readers, “Grape must spend an hour a day writing about his history of trouble, and there’s a lot of trouble to choose from.”
Carry Her Home by Caroline Anna Bock
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | 2018
The stories in this collection “unfold across the decades from the 1960s to the present day and reveal hopes and fears, truth and grief, and love.”
Bellevue Literary Press | 2023
This work of noir “reflects the lost world of Manhattan’s Lower East Side—the cradle of Jewish immigration during the first years of the twentieth century—in a dark mirror.”
Bellevue Literary Press | 2024
Told in two mirrored narratives, this novel “unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.”
Into the Wilderness: Parenting Stories by David Harris Ebenbach
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | 2012
According to Joan Leegant, Ebenbach “takes us deep into the heart of the messy confusion and terror and unfathomable love that make up that shaky state we call parenthood.”
The Sister Knot by Ann S. Epstein
Vine Leaves Press | 2024
Epstein’s novel follows “how two orphaned young Berlin women become each other’s family during and after the Holocaust.”
Hot Chicken Wings by Jyl Lynn Felman
Aunt Lute Books | 1992
According to Adrienne Rich, Felman “tracks the forbidden edges of being Jewish, female, lesbian at the end of the twentieth century.”
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon
McPherson & Company | 2010
Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Fiction, this novel follows “the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts are all struggling to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive.”
Blessed Hands by Frume Halpern
Translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Frayed Edge Press | 2023
The stories in this collection “present the lives of protagonists who are working-class poor, social outcasts, and those experiencing illness, disability, and racism.”
Nirvana Is Here by Aaron Hamburger
Three Rooms Press | 2019
This novel is “an honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #MeToo movement.”
My Jewish Face & Other Stories by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Aunt Lute Books | 1990
The women in this collection “struggle for lesbian community, for proud Jewish identity, and always for justice steeped in compassion.”
Early Pleasures by Frederick Kohner
Black Heron Press | 2011
This novel is “a fictionalization of the author’s adolescent sexual adventures in Austria and Paris in the years following World War I.”
Washington Writers’ Publishing House | 2023
This novel is “a coming-of-age journey toward redemption and self-awareness, skirting the lines between spirituality, skepticism, and faith.”
Dissonance by Lisa Lenard-Cook
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2014
According to Kevin McIlvoy, this novel “is bold in its scale, placing us at different eras in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and in the scientific world of Los Alamos, New Mexico.”
The Man Who Loved His Wife by Jennifer Anne Moses
Mayapple Press | 2020
The characters in this short story collection “grapple with God, their loved ones, fate, death, hope, Hitler, transcendence, and the 4,000-year-old history of Judaism.”
Autumn House Press | 2024
This book of 16 stories is “a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women’s bodies and psyches.”
Dreams Under Glass by Anca L. Szilágyi
Lanternfish Press | 2022
In this novel, a recent art school graduate “begins to obsessively imagine her daily grind expressed in unsettling and sometimes violent dioramas.”
Ripped Away by Shirley Reva Vernick
Regal House Publishing | 2022
This novel “is based on real historical events, including the Ripper crimes, the inquests, and the accusations against immigrants.”
Moses in Sinai by Simone Zelitch
Black Heron Press | 2010
In this novel, Zelitch “rewrites the books of Exodus and Numbers by way of The Arabian Nights, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Cecil B. DeMille.”
From Where We Are by Nicole Zelniker
Vine Leaves Press | 2024
According to David Jackson Ambrose, this novel is “a kaleidoscopic gem that adeptly showcases how the shameful misdeeds of the past reverberate into modern acts of violence.”
Nonfiction Books
Buoyant: A Child’s Journey of Survival by Joseph G. Brin
Tursulowe Press | 2023
This book of hand-cut silhouettes “chronicles the world of a joyful nine-year-old boy navigating day-to-day survival following the occupation of Paris.”
Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2021
According to Melissa Febos, this book is “a daughter’s heartrending tribute, a love story riddled by addiction, a mystery whose solution lies at the intersection of art and memory.”
How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
Restless Books | 2020
Edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert, this book is “a momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life.”
A Sturdy Yes of a People: Selected Writings by Joan Nestle
Sinister Wisdom | 2022
This volume features Nestle’s “persistent involvement in liberation movements, LGBTQ histories, erotic writing, and archives that document gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer lives.”
A Place They Called Home: Reclaiming Citizenship. Stories of a New Jewish Return to Germany
Berlinica | 2018
Edited by Donna Swarthout, A Place They Called Home is “the first book to give a voice to the descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors who have chosen to restore their German citizenship.”
The Poetics of Wrongness by Rachel Zucker
Wave Books | 2023
In her first book of critical nonfiction, Zucker “explores wrongness as a foundational orientation of opposition and provocation.”
Literary Magazines
Tahoma Literary Review | 2024
This poem begins, “We told her someone she loved had died / but her memory was busy working / in a pastrami shop / down the block from the ocean.”
manywor(l)ds | 2024
The poem “FR P L ST N ” begins, “There is complete quiet. / It is time to talk / to yourself. It is time to hear / two words.”
“Dear Memphis,” by Rachel Edelman
Terrain.org | 2024
This poem begins, “Dear Memphis, // Once, my grandma’s mailbox toppled / in straight-line winds / that tipped an old oak / onto her roof—”
“Kaddish: Mom’s de Kooning” by Marguerite Feitlowitz
Another Chicago Magazine | 2023
This essay begins, “‘And then there was Mom’s de Kooning,’ we like to recall, our pride as bright as the colors on that enormous canvas.”
Three Poems by Norman Finkelstein
Cincinnati Review | 2023
The poem “Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Where Go the Boats?’” begins, “Gray green is the river / At the end of the world….”
“You Barely Even Work Here: On Higher Education and the Myths of Neutrality” by Leora Fridman
Full Stop | 2024
This essay begins, “My friend has been a professor for thirty years and never felt the need to identify her ethnicity until this past fall.”
“Sing Ladino” by Yankev Glatshteyn
Translated from the Yiddish by Asya Vaisman Schulman
Words Without Borders | 2016
This poem begins, “Sing Ladino, you blond songer, / Our magicjargonino, / Multicolored chattering, / Multitongued languageing….”
“Aubade with Selichot” by Mónica Gomery
The Kenyon Review | 2024
This poem begins, “Look how the light bruises / the sky, how the crickets shred / quiet with their chatty back legs.”
“Make a Tzohar in the Ark” by Mónica Gomery
Radar Poetry | 2023
This poem begins, “Thirty-seven & the pain / gets worse each month. That burn / in the womb where the baby / isn’t.”
“Why There Is No Hebrew Word for Obey” by Jessica Jacobs
Southern Humanities Review | 2023
This poem begins, “What came later / was the real trial. Because God knew // Isaac would not die / while Abraham climbed the mountain believing….”
“For Whom Do You Bathe and Make Yourself Beautiful?” by Elizabeth Jacobson
SWWIM | 2023
This poem begins, “A black widow tends two webs in different corners of my bathroom.”
“Its Petrified Imprint” by Sharon Kirsch
Terrain.org | 2023
This work of photography and prose begins, “In a high wet meadow bordering a spruce forest, a crane disturbed the grasses, then vanished.”
“Wandering Half Jew” by Daniel Kleifgen
Under the Sun | 2023
This essay begins, “Colombo, Sri Lanka, is one of those cities where a two-hour bus ride is enough to bring your whole worldview into question.”
“Honey Dazzle” by Michele Kotler
SWWIM | 2022
This poem begins, “The apple slice buckles under the weight of honey the sweat // that beads after being cut open….”
A Portfolio of Poetry by Aviya Kushner
Tupelo Quarterly | 2022
The poem “History” begins, “—who was Ibn Ezra, / but a man wandering, alone?”
“God’s Appointments” by Sam Levy
The Hudson Review | 2022
This story begins, “Now forty, Moshe was what his mother called ‘stale goods’—his father preferred ‘bum’—and those in their fold had begun to speculate on what might be stalling a match.”
The Kenyon Review | 2023
This essay begins, “The birth certificate that documents my entry into the world is the first of many documents that explain my life, but when I look at it, things go wrong immediately.”
“Three turns of a Chassidic Microscope” by Yehoshua November
Another Chicago Magazine | 2021
This poem begins, “1) Solid, tangible world. 2) World as mere / surface, overlay atop Divine speech.”
manywor(l)ds | 2024
The poem “In the psych ward, you gasp” begins, “In the psych ward, you gasp / with every waking, gulping breaths // through a stiff neck and bruised senses / of self….”
“To the Woman Whose Body I Washed” by Robin Reif
Off Assignment | 2022
This essay begins, “Three days in the morgue and the chemicals released in death had turned your skin the color of rust.”
“Refugia*” by Yehudit Silverman
Dark Matter: Women Witnessing | 2024
This poem begins, “The night of a thousand stars / won’t keep you safe / as you run on desert sands….”
“Women at Shiva” by Donna Spruijt-Metz
Tahoma Literary Review | 2021
This poem begins, “When a mother dies // she leaves her residue—a snail’s trail // across the days of her daughters—”
To Be a Jewish Dyke in the 21st Century
Sinister Wisdom | 2021
This issue addresses the questions, “What are Jewish lesbians thinking about? Writing about? Making art about now, here in the first two decades of the 21st century?”
