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
Hills Full of Holes by Dan Alter
Fernwood Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1594981579
“Part elegy, part pastoral, part ode to beloved and beleaguered set-asides,” this poetry collection “journeys in widening understandings of injuries to body and land, and their possible recoveries.”
The Eating Knife by Ayelet Amittay
Fernwood Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1594981548
This poetry collection is an “exploration of personal and intergenerational trauma through the lens of the Akedah, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac.”
Naming a Hurricane by Madeline Artenberg
Pink Trees Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1666400250
Artenberg’s poetry collection explores “that double edge—dazzling human possibility, potential disappointment.”
The Loneliest Monk by Richard Chess
Orison Books | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-949039-71-9
“In poems characterized by their wit and wisdom,” Chess’s collection “offers us glimpses of a seeker’s life from childhood through early old-age.”
What Can I Ask: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 by Elana Dykewomon
Sinister Wisdom | 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944981-80-8
The poems in this collection of Dykewomon’s work “help us understand the contours of sexism, homophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism.”
Dear Memphis by Rachel Edelman
River River Books | 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9881378-2-5
This poetry collection “explores the displacement and belonging of a Jewish family in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside their histories of community and environment.”
Lorenzo by the Ghost Light: A Spiel by Les Epstein
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | 2023
ISBN: 9798985483369
This collection of lyrical stories is “absurd, silly and on occasion scatological, indirectly commenting on an era losing its sense of balance.”
Teddy Orloff and the Three Onions by Les Epstein
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | 2024
ISBN: 9798987569467
According to R. Nikolas Macioci, “Teddy, a baker, undertakes the mission to find the right onion” in this book following his “addictive adventure, not unlike Don Quixote’s or Huck and Jim’s.”
Sundry Abductions by Maria Dylan Himmelman
Hanging Loose Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-934909-75-1
This collection “honors the memory of three Hanging Loose founders: Ron Schreiber, Emmett Jarrett, and Robert Hershon.”
The Worried Well by Anthony Immergluck
Autumn House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63768-103-9
This book of poetry is a “tragicomic collection that explores the intersection of anxiety and safety in a chaotic world.”
Sweet Malida: Memories of a Bene Israel Woman by Zilka Joseph
Mayapple Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-952781-19-3
According to Joan Roland, in these poems and short prose pieces Joseph “provides the reader with a rich, multilayered portrait of the Bene Israel—and of herself.”
Tulipwood Books | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9914048-2-2
In this collection of poetry and essays, Lavin “crafts a generous vision of Lake Michigan, Chicago, pacifist Jewish heritage, climate science, sensuality, love, and ethics—all experienced through the senses of an ever-changing body.”
Lullaby for the Sixth Extinction by Julia B. Levine
Wolfson Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-950066-25-4
This poetry collection explores “the question of how we reconcile nature’s astounding beauty and its unflinching indifference to suffering.”
Well You Needn’t by Joel Lewis
Hanging Loose Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-934909-80-5
In this collection, Lewis “gathers his poems about the music that has occupied him since his teenage years.”
Girl in a Forest by Elline Lipkin
Trio House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949487-60-2
According to Victoria Chang, these “list-making poems in fugue quietly accumulate agency, one phrase at a time.”
Grid Books | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-946830-30-2
“Written in the wake of the sudden disappearance of her nephew,” Medved’s poetry collection “tells of the struggle to process loss without any physical anchor.”
Tiny Extravaganzas by Diane Mehta
Arrowsmith Press | 2023
ISBN: 9798987924112
The poems in this collection are “miniaturist examinations of art, aging, literature, grief, parenting, the sublime, labor, and faith.”
My Oceanography by Harriet Levin Millan
CavanKerry Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-933880-67-9
“In exploring the persona’s struggle to create art,” the poems in this collection “engage the reader and connect us to the demands of work, marriage and the everyday.”
Crowd Surfing With God by Adrienne Novy
Half Mystic Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948552-16-5
This poetry collection discusses “growing up with a rare genetic disorder and mental illness, family and being in a multifaith household, pop culture, and the acts of playing and listening to music bringing you closer to yourself and to healing.”
The Holy and Broken Bliss by Alicia Ostriker
Alice James Books | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-949944-67-9
The poems in this collection “are grounded in daily existence, human tenderness, the rituals of a long marriage, and the poet’s ongoing spiritual quest.”
It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out by Isaac Pickell
Black Ocean | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-939568-63-2
This book is a “linguistically experimental and socially engaged collection of poems that examines questions of colorism within an economically driven world.”
What I Got for a Dollar by Bert Stern
Grid Books | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946830-01-2
According to Richard Fein, Stern’s “poems are rare vessels of encounter, necessity, and vacancy, splendid visions of a blessed world where life is both given and taken away.”
Alice James Books | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949944-73-0
In this poetry collection, Sugar “obsessively searches form and language to communicate what happens in the U.S. mass incarceration system.”
Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After by Jane Yolen
Holy Cow! Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9986010-9-0
In this poetry collection, Yolen “gives us a feminist view of Biblical themes and personalities such as Eve, Sarah, David and Goliath.”
Fiction
Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-954404-34-2
This epistolary novel weaves together its protagonist’s “high hopes and deep disappointments as she navigates relationships, marriage, divorce, single motherhood, financial struggles, and professional ups and downs.”
The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad
Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-954404-23-6
In this trio of novellas, “three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises.”
Golden Threads by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Ayin Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961814-21-9
This book “will take people of all ages on a journey into the multi-faith world of Morocco’s craftspeople, inspiring generative conversations about art, labor, community, and technology for years to come.”
Stealing: A Novel in Dreams by Shelly Brivic
Frayed Edge Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64251-003-4
In this novel, “two Jewish brothers growing up in the 1950s Bronx navigate a toxic home environment headed by an emotionally abusive father and an unhappy mother.”
Bellevue Literary Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-954276-25-3
Told in two mirrored narratives, this novel “unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.”
Vine Leaves Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-236-4
According to Sara Bolder, this novel “makes the case with passion, spirit and humor, for the full personhood of the elderly and disabled.”
Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn
Bellevue Literary Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-954276-56-7
In this novel, “Eduardo and his younger brother, living in exile for several years in the United States, travel back to their native Guatemala to participate in a Jewish children’s camp in a remote forest of the highland mountains.”
Blessed Hands: Stories by Frume Halpern
Translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Frayed Edge Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64251-049-2
This collection of short stories from the mid-twentieth century “present the lives of protagonists who are working-class poor, social outcasts, and those experiencing illness, disability, and racism.”
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Tara Ison
Ig Publishing | 2023
ISBN: 978-1632461452
According to Robert Olen Butler, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf is “a deeply resonant work of art driven by the central yearning in the greatest literary narratives: the yearning for a self, for an identity, for a place in the world.”
Dzanc Books | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-938603-79-2
In this novel, Leviant “delivers a joyful reimagining of the classic tale of Don Quixote through the eyes of his long-overlooked sidekick, Sancho Panza.”
Partly Strong, Partly Broken by Nathaniel Popkin
New Door Books | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-7355585-9-2
In this novel, “a progressive rabbi tries desperately to hold her interfaith community together amid increasing clashes over politics, racism, and Israel.”
A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
EastOver Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958094-63-1
In this novel, an amnesiac man’s “search to discover his true identity exposes how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt.”
American Playground by Michael Isaac Shokrian
the Thieving Magpie | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9925417-0-0
In American Playground, “7-year-old Mishel Manoucherian’s family has packed up their life in Tehran and moved to Los Angeles, launching him headfirst into a disorienting new world of social and schoolyard expectations.”
Noemi Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-934819-92-0
This novel is “based loosely on the life of Assia Wevill, a German Jew who escaped the Nazis and eventually became the woman whose affair with Ted Hughes broke up his marriage to Sylvia Plath.”
Simple Gimpl: The Definitive Bilingual Edition by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Translated from the Yiddish by Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and David Stromberg
Restless Books | 2023
ISBN: 9781632060389
In this edition, Singer’s “original Yiddish appears alongside his own partial translation, now completed and edited by writer and scholar David Stromberg, and the 1953 translation by fellow Nobel laureate Saul Bellow.”
Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm
Dzanc Books | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-28-0
“Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades,” this novel “combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief.”
Nonfiction & Multi-Genre Works
We’re in America Now: A Survivor’s Stories by Fred Amram
Holy Cow! Press | 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9864480-2-7
According to J. C. Hallman, in this memoir “politics and war compel Amram’s family to leave the only home they ever knew and embark on a personal exodus, fleeing a new pharaoh.”
History Is Embarrassing by Karen Chase
CavanKerry Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-960327-02-4
Chase’s essay collection “weaves together threads from one single life—a girl suffering from polio, a poet, a Jewish woman, a writer, and a painter.”
The Braille Encyclopedia: Brief Essays on Altered Sight by Naomi Cohn
Rose Metal Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-941628-33-1
This memoir about progressive vision loss “shapeshifts between lyric essay and prose poetry and traverses the divides between lived experience, history, and scientific knowledge.”
Mamaleh: A Legacy of Loss and Love by Elaine Culbertson
Tursulowe Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-957057-22-4
In this memoir, Culbertson blends “a child’s hidden vantage with an adult’s fierce clarity, rendering scenes of Holocaust aftermath not only from survivor perspectives inside the camps, but from a little girl’s perspective beneath a Brooklyn dinner table.”
Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year by Arwen Donahue
Hub City Press | 2022
ISBN: 979-8-88574-000-5
In Donahue’s book of 130 ink-and-watercolor drawings, “each visual is paired with a written reflection on the day’s doings, interwoven with the longer-arc history of her family, the farm, and their community.””
The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann
Hub City Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-88574-070-8
This nonfiction book originally published in 1987 “gives an atmospheric account of the New Orleans trial of the Governor of Louisiana for racketeering, fraud, and bribery.”
Jambu Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1734146011
Edited by Bobby Coleman, this tribute anthology features the works of seventy-four poets and artists celebrating the life and work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Writing as a Way of Life: A Book About Art, Craft, and Devotion by Brian Morton
Black Lawrence Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-62557-177-9
“Drawing on a rich and varied career as a writer and teacher,” Morton “provides writers with a guidebook for finding the psychic equipment they’ll need to remain committed to their craft over the long haul.”
Dickens in Brooklyn by Jay Neugeboren
EastOver Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-958094-64-8
This book is a “virtuoso collection of unusual, compelling essays” in which Neugeboren “explores experiences that have been central to his life.”
An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing by Wendy Elisheva Somerson
North Atlantic Books | 2025
ISBN: 979-8889841876
In this book, Somerson “shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies—and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging.”
Crushing the Red Flowers by Jennifer Voigt Kaplan
Ig Publishing | 2019
ISBN: 978-1632460943
In this middle-grade novel, “Emil Rosen and Friedrich Weber couldn’t have less in common, but in the summer of 1938, they must both deal with the changes steamrolling through Germany.”
Literary Magazines
“Seasons in the Vanishing World: Court Observing in the ICE Age” by Philip G. Alcabes
Arrowsmith Journal | 2026
This essay begins, “The armed thugs first came in the spring. The weather was unusually cool and rainy, dogwood blossoms appearing late and withering fast, then the magnolias.”
Five Poems by Corbin Allardice
The Hopkins Review | 2024
The poem “Eating Days” begins, “you loved a bochur in the season of bluebells and crayse / the night was a flat plane / his light touched marrow…”
“Reading Papa’s Sholem Aleichem” by Diane Cypkin
Epistemic Literary | 2025
This piece begins, “Even more than the huge bookcase chock-full of Yiddish books that Papa somehow got through our front door, I remember the look on his face.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2026
This poem begins, “If after / a bad night I need someone to blame, there are so many candidates.”
“Naked Night in the Cold Room” by Bonnie Jill Emanuel
Tahoma Literary Review | 2026
This poem begins, “Nine naked vacant eyes wild as almonds in a field of / trees.”
“Shadow Boxing with Apollo Creed” by Andrew Furman
Oyster River Pages | 2024
This short story begins, “Mark spotted Apollo Creed (whom he didn’t know as Carl Weathers) in the parking lot of the Ole’s in Northridge.”
“My Mother, The Summer, The Catskills, and Me” by Elyssa Goodman
Lilith Publications | 2024
This essay begins, “‘Hey there—are you related to Rani who took the Concord photos?’ The message appeared last summer from The Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project.”
“Each Other Moment” by Jessica Greenbaum
Alaska Quarterly Review | 2023
This poem begins, “We turned location back on. / We were resetting our passwords. / We were scanning the QR code / to order an iced matcha latte.”
“Of Blood & God & Dirt” by Julia Kolchinsky
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This essay begins, “‘You ready?’ the phlebotomist asks, holding out two vials. I nod and joke, ‘Sure, I’ve got enough.'”
PB Daily | 2026
This short story begins, “Before the fire, there is glitter. There’s glitter on the sign outside the girls’ cabin—G‑3 So Free!”
“Power Dynamics” by Aspen Pleasant
Epistemic Literary | 2025
This short story begins, “I’m bored of staring at the same scene through my tiny window, hardly able to see past the metal bars blocking my view.”
“Appalachian Homecoming” by G. Samantha Rosenthal
Lilith Publications | 2025
This essay begins, “Underneath the canopy of a weather-worn carport and the foliage of an evergreen magnolia tree, roughly two dozen friends gather on the second night of Pesach for a backyard seder.”
“Holding On” by Jodie Sadowsky
Multiplicity | 2025
This essay begins, “My mom tugs my nightgown over my head. I am trying to wake up, but it’s still night.”
Jewish American Heritage Month Playlist
Shō Poetry Journal | 2026
This playlist features audio recordings and contextual notes from six poets published in Shō Poetry Journal, including Daniel Lurie, Loisa Fenichell, and Brooke Sahni.
The Hopkins Review | 2024
The essay “Scientists Recognize Twenty-Seven Emotions, and One of Them Is … Calmness” begins, “They say that calm is the color of sea oats; they say that to be calm was once common.”
“The Yoga Retreat” by Leigh Sugar
Epiphany | 2022
This poem begins, “Monday / Flies line the dormitory corridors. No one sweeps them up.”
Behind the Byline: An Interview with Jane Bernstein
New England Review | 2025
In this interview, Meera Vijayann and Jane Bernstein discuss public tragedies, the myth of closure, and Bernstein’s essay “I’m Thinking About My Sister, Fifty-Eight Years After She Was Murdered” from Issue 46.1.
“The Watcher” by Cynthia Weiner
Epiphany | 2007
This short story begins, “In a daze, the morning after her mother’s sudden, and fatal, heart attack, Kate Ehrlich had agreed to nearly all the Jewish burial customs the funeral director recommended, even though neither she nor her mother had ever been the least bit religious.”
