Ruth Behar

As a storyteller, children’s author, teacher, and anthropologist, Ruth Behar is acclaimed for the compassion she brings to her quest to understand the depth of the human experience. She is a Newbery Honor, Sydney Taylor Honor, and Pura Belpré Award–winning author of the novels, Across So Many Seas, Lucky Broken Girl, and Letters from Cuba, and the picture books, Tía Fortuna’s New Home and A Snowy Hanukkah for Luz. Her books address themes of historical memory and bring to life Sephardic and Cuban Jewish identity. Seeking intergenerational conversations, she has co-authored with her son, Gabriel Frye-Behar, the picture books Pepita Meets Bebita and Picadillo for Paulina. Ruth was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in New York, and has lived in Spain and Mexico. She has returned to Cuba to build cultural bridges and made a documentary, Adio Kerida, about her journey. Her work also includes poetry, memoir, and the travel books, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, An Island Called Home, and Traveling Heavy. She was the first Latina to win a MacArthur “Genius Grant.” Her other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, being named a Great Immigrant by the Carnegie Corporation, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For more information, visit RuthBehar.com

Michelle Cameron

Michelle Cameron writes about little-known epochs of Jewish history. The fruit of her hands: The story of Shira of Ashkenaz tells the story of the rise of antisemitism in medieval Europe; Babylon: A novel of Jewish captivity takes place during the biblical Babylonian exile; and Beyond the ghetto gates and its sequel, Napoleon’s mirage, explore the young General Napoleon Bonaparte’s relationship with the Jews of Italy and Israel.

Among other accolades, Beyond the ghetto gates won the silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for historical fiction, while Babylon was awarded the gold medal by the Historical Fiction Company in the Ancient World category.

In addition to her research and writing, Michelle teaches creative writing to children, teens, and aspiring novelists at The Writers Circle, a New Jersey-based creative writing program.

Jill Bialosky

Poet, Novelist, Essayist, Editor

Jill Bialosky’s newest work of poetry is Mock heart: New & selected poems. Her newest prose work is The end is the beginning: A personal history of my mother. Asylum: A personal, historical, natural inquiry in 103 lyric sections was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She is the author of four other acclaimed collections of poetry, four critically acclaimed novels—most recently The deceptions, a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize—and two memoirs, Poetry will save your life and the New York Times bestselling History of a suicide: My sister’s unfinished life. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker; The Atlantic; Harper’s Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Kenyon Review; Harvard Review; The Paris Review; and The best American poetry, among others. She coedited with Helen Schulman the anthology Wanting a child. She is an executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company and was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.

Susan Blumberg-Kason

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Bernardine’s Shanghai salon: The story of the doyenne of old China (Post Hill Press, 2023), a 2023 Zibby Awards finalist for Best Book for the History Lover. She is also the author of Good Chinese wife: A love affair with China gone wrong (Sourcebooks, 2014) and the 2024 Zibby Awards winner When friends come from afar: The remarkable story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League (University of Illinois Press, 2024). She is the co-editor of Hong Kong noir (Akashic Books, 2018) and a regular contributor to Asian Review of Books, Cha: An Asian Literary Review, the Jewish Book Council, and World Literature Today. Susan is currently working on a biography of Golda Meir’s childhood and teenage years in Milwaukee and Denver.

Judy Bolton-Fasman

Judy Bolton-Fasman – www.judyboltonfasman.com – is the author of Asylum: A memoir of family secrets, published by Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and essay anthologies—The shell game: Writers play with borrowed forms (University of Nebraska Press), Where we dwell, Pangyrus' 10th-anniversary volume, and Letting grief speak: Writing portals for life after loss (Columbia University Press). Her work has appeared in Hypertext Magazine, Catapult, Atticus Review, Oldster, The Rumpus, and WBUR's Cognoscenti. Her essays have frequently appeared in Memoir Monday/Memoir Land, curated by Sari Botton. Judy is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and a 2024 BAE nominee. She is the recipient of writing fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Mineral School.

Lisa Leshne

Lisa Leshne is a literary agent, publishing consultant, and founder of The Leshne Agency. Her clients include #1 New York Times bestselling authors, Pulitzer and Polk Award-winning journalists, Olympic gold medalists, business and political leaders, experts, advocates, and debut authors.

Lisa’s list is primarily nonfiction, spanning memoir, narrative, current affairs, politics, business, culture, sports, humor, biography, health, self-help, and prescriptive. She also represents select adult fiction, young adult fiction, middle grade fiction, and children’s books. She is especially passionate about working with journalists, experts, and authors with extraordinary stories, strong voices, and fresh perspectives.

In addition to her work as an agent, Lisa teaches a course on How to Write a Book Proposal and offers private consulting for writers seeking guidance on book proposals, manuscript materials, pitch letters, positioning, platform, publishing strategy, and the broader publishing process.

Lisa has worked in media, publishing, and entertainment for over three decades. Just after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1990, she co-founded and served as publisher of The Prague Post, the largest English-language newspaper in Central Europe, along with its book division and website. She later held positions in New York at Accenture’s Entertainment & Media Group, Dow Jones, and The Wall Street Journal, where she oversaw advertising, marketing, and circulation for WSJ.com in Europe and Asia. After September 11, 2001, Lisa spent a year at the Partnership for New York City’s Financial Recovery Fund, evaluating grant applications and providing strategic advice to small businesses destroyed in the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

Lisa has been profiled for her entrepreneurial work by 60 Minutes, the BBC, Fortune, Money, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, Advertising Age, Smithsonian, and other outlets. She is also the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and has been an invited speaker and panelist at Harvard and Columbia Business Schools. She is a member of the Association of Author Representatives (AAR) and has served on the faculty of the Kauai Writer’s Conference and The Faulkner for All! Writer’s Conference in New Orleans. She will be on the faculty at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference & Literary Festival February 10–14, 2027.

Originally from Champaign, Illinois, Lisa has a BA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives in New York City.

Erika Dreifus

Erika Dreifus is the author of Birthright: Poems and Quiet Americans: Stories, which was named an American Library Association/Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. An active literary consultant and advocate, Erika teaches at Baruch College/CUNY; serves on the boards of The Artists Against Antisemitism and the Leo Baeck Institute; and is a Sami Rohr Jewish Literary Institute fellow. Erika writes and lectures widely and is also the publisher-editor of The Practicing Writer, a free (and popular) e-newsletter for writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She lives in New York City.

Ayelet Durantt

Ayelet Durantt is a Senior Director of Marketing at Random House. Her first job out of college was as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, and after a stint at Simon & Schuster, she joined Penguin Random House, where she has been for the past 14 years. Ayelet loves the opportunity to be creative, find unique ways to support her authors, and connect directly with readers. Ayelet is the Education Co-Chair of Jewish Connections, an employee resource group at PRH, and considers it an honor whenever she gets to work on a book by a Jewish author or one that features Jewish content. This year, she has handled the marketing for such bestselling titles as When we see you again by Rachel Goldberg Polin, Joyful, anyway by Kate Bowler, Famesick by Lena Dunham, and The things we never say by Elizabeth Strout.

Ayelet lives in the Bronx with her husband and two daughters, so these days most of her reading is either a manuscript for work or a picture book at bedtime.

Estelle Erasmus

Estelle Erasmus is an award-winning journalist, author, writing professor, and former editor-in-chief of five national magazines. She is the author of Writing that gets noticed: Find your voice, become a better storyteller, get published, named a “Best Book for Writers” by Poets & Writers, a gold winner in the Writing & Publishing category (Classics Division) of the 2025 Reader Views Literary Awards, and winner of a 2023 Zibby Award.

She has written for more than 150 publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, Salon, Newsweek, and Marie Claire. Her pieces for The New York Times and The Washington Post have gone viral globally. Her work has been discussed on The View, and she has appeared on Good Morning America. She wrote the “All About the Pitch” column for Writer’s Digest and served as the final judge for its Personal Essay Awards competition for several years.

Estelle is an adjunct writing professor at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, creator of its Editor-on-Call series, and a recipient of the 2023 NYU SPS Teaching Excellence Award. She also served as a judge for NYU’s Fulbright selection process. She teaches writing courses and leads webinars for Writer’s Digest. Her students have placed work in The New York Times’ Modern Love column, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Kenyon Review, among other publications.

She hosts Freelance Writing Direct, a two-time Podcast of the Year winner from the American Writing Awards and a 2026 Silver Signal Awards winner in the Education category. Her TEDx Talk, “How to Get Noticed in Your Writing and Beyond,” was delivered at Boston College in 2025. She is currently working on a narrative nonfiction book about her years as a magazine editor and dating expert that blends memoir, reporting, and cultural critique.

Find her at EstelleSErasmus.com, on Instagram at @EstelleSErasmus, and on Substack at EstelleSErasmus.substack.com.

Alison Hammer

Alison Hammer is half of the writing duo Ali Brady (along with her BFF Bradeigh Godfrey). They are the USA Today bestselling authors of romantic, heartwarming, funny novels, including The beach trap, The comeback summer, Until next summer, Battle of the bookstores, and the novella One night, two holidays. Their books have been “best of summer” picks by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Parade, and Katie Couric Media. Alison lives in Chicago and works as an advertising creative director. She’s also the founder and co-president of The Artists Against Antisemitism and the author of You and me and us and Little pieces of me. She has no pets, plants, or kids, but she does have three nephews—two human and one canine.

Richard Ho

Richard Ho is an acclaimed author of children’s books, including Two new years, a picture book illustrated by Lynn Scurfield, which received the Sydney Taylor Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award.

Both Chinese and Jewish, he crafts stories about all facets of his identity and the delightful ways they intertwine. He and his proudly multicultural family live in New Jersey.

Jacqueline Jules

Jacqueline Jules is the author of The golden key to the garden (Bottlecap Press, 2026), Manna in the morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's broken string, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, Stronger than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications, 2014), and Field trip to the museum (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She has forthcoming books from Shanti Arts and Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications, including Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Jewish Literary Journal, ONE ART, Gyroscope Review, and Minyan Magazine. Ritualwell has republished over a dozen of her poems on Jewish themes. She is also the author of numerous books for young people, including Tag your dreams: Poems of play and persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020) and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). A retired librarian, she has worked in both elementary school and synagogue libraries. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com and https://metaphoricaltruths.blogspot.com/.

Cecily Kaiser

Cecily Kaiser is a vice president and publisher at Penguin Young Readers. She joined Penguin with a mission to create engaging, empowering, and elegant books for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. She launched the RISE x Penguin Workshop imprint in 2020 and has since published groundbreaking books for children ages 0–5, including ALA Notables, an Ezra Jack Keats Medal winner, Original Art Show selections, a Sydney Taylor Award-winning board book, and most importantly, kid favorites. Cecily also oversees the World of Eric Carle publishing program, proudly continuing Eric Carle’s legacy by creating new books for new generations.

Cecily was previously the children’s publisher at Phaidon Press and, prior to that, launched the Appleseed imprint for children ages 0–5 at Abrams Books. She began her career 26 years ago at Scholastic, first as a book clubs manager and then as editorial director of the Cartwheel imprint for children ages 0–6. Cecily earned a degree in child development at Tufts University and a master’s degree in business from NYU. She is devoted to her young readership, bringing a developmental perspective to her editorial work and a commitment to authentic ingenuity.

After living in and loving Brooklyn for 18 years, Cecily now happily resides in the suburbs of New Jersey with her husband and two kids. They are eager and active members of their Reform synagogue community, where Cecily is on the board of trustees. When she's not at her computer, Cecily and her family make music, make cookies, make fires in the fireplace, water the plants, and savor their cozy home.

Eytan Kessler

Eytan Kessler is a technical services librarian at the Huntington Public Library, on Long Island. On Instagram, he uses his @Sleepy_Librarian_ account to talk about Jewish and queer books, libraries, Judaism, and antisemitism. Eytan helps organize the annual Jewish Bookstagram Tour that takes place during the month of Kislev, to help promote Jewish bookstagramers and Jewish books.

Ann Koffsky

Ann Diament Koffsky is the award-winning author and illustrator of more than 50 books for children, including Blazing humor: Mel Brooks is seriously funny, Ping pong Shabbat, and the Kayla and Kugel Jewish holiday series.

Previously, she was an editor and art director at Behrman House Publishers and an illustration professor at Stern College, Yeshiva University.

Ann lives with her family in West Hempstead, New York.

Ken Krimstein

Ken Krimstein was awarded the 2025 Berlin Prize for his work in graphic biography. In addition, an adaptation of his 2017 graphic biography, The three escapes of Hannah Arendt, winner of the Bernard Brummel Award for Biography and translated into ten languages, was staged by the Deutsches Theater, opening on October 25, 2025.

Krimstein is also the author of the acclaimed graphic biographies When I grow up—The lost autobiographies of six Yiddish teenagers (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Einstein in Kafkaland—How Albert fell down the rabbit hole and came up with the universe (Bloomsbury, 2024).

He’s a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and his graphic reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and many other magazines and websites.

Simona Zaretsky

is Jewish Book Council’s manager of digital content strategy. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in English and history. Prior to joining JBC, she worked at Oxford University Press. Her writing has been featured in Lilith, The Normal School, Digging Through the Fat, and other publications. She holds an MFA in fiction from The New School.

Aviya Kushner

Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of Wolf lamb bomb (Orison Books, 2021), named a New & Noteworthy title by The New York Times and winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and The grammar of God: A journey into the words and worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House, 2015), a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature finalist, and one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Religion Stories of the Year. Her translation of Yudit Shahar’s Its me speaking is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press in 2027. She is The Forward’s language columnist and a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in translation. Aviya is a senior editor at Odessa Editions, acquiring outstanding Jewish and Israeli fiction and nonfiction.

Photo credit Danielle Aquiline

Leigh Stein

Leigh Stein is a bestselling novelist, award-winning poet, cultural critic, and creator of the Attention economy newsletter on Substack. She is the author of six books in three genres, including the critically acclaimed satirical novel Self care, the Gothic mystery If you're seeing this, it's meant for you, and the memoir Land of enchantment. As a coach and consultant, she helps content creators become authors and authors become content creators.

AR Vishny

A.R. Vishny was born and raised in Massachusetts but now calls New York City home. Vishny’s debut novel, Night owls (HarperCollins, 2024), won the National Jewish Book Award and Sydney Taylor Book Award and was named a “Best of 2024” pick by Booklist, School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Her essays on Jewish representation in pop culture have appeared in Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, and Hey Alma. When she’s not writing, she’s at the theater or hunting for the perfect slice of cheesecake.

Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Lemann was born and raised in New Orleans. He began his journalism career there as a 17-year-old staff writer for an alternative weekly paper called the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated from Harvard College, where he was president of The Harvard Crimson, in 1976, magna cum laude in American History and Literature. He has worked as a reporter and editor at The Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, The Atlantic (where he was national correspondent from 1983 to 1999), and The New Yorker (where he has been a staff writer for twenty-seven years), and contributed to many other publications.

From 2003 to 2013, he was dean of Columbia Journalism School, leading a period of significant growth and change for the school, and since then he has been a professor there. At Columbia, he has also helped launch Columbia Global Reports, a publishing venture that he continues to lead, Columbia World Projects, and the Knight Columbia First Amendment Institute. From 2023 to 2025, he served as co-chair of Columbia’s task force on antisemitism. His books include The promised land (1991), The big test (1999), Redemption (2006), Transaction man (2019), Higher admissions (2024), and, most recently, Returning (2026). He is a member of several honorary societies, including the American Philosophical Society, the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he served as co-chair of the academy’s Commission on Reimagining Our Economy.

Sara Lippmann

Sara Lippmann is the author of the novels Lech and Hidden river and the story collections Doll palace and Jerks. Her fiction has won the Lilith Fiction Prize and has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her essays have appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she co-edited the anthology Smashing the tablets: Radical retellings of the Hebrew Bible. She is a co-founder of Writing Co-lab, an artist-run online teaching cooperative, and the editor in chief of Epiphany magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.

Nancy Ludmerer

Nancy Ludmerer’s Jewish-themed short stories and flash fiction appear in Kenyon Review, Midstream, The Saturday Evening Post, Litro, Streetlight, Gemini, Orca Lit, TSS Publishing (shortlisted for the Cambridge Prize), Minyan, and Best small fictions 2022. “The Loneliness Cure,” based on the life of a female Chasidic rebbe in early 19th-century Ukraine, won Orison Books’ 2021 short fiction competition and appears in Best spiritual literature 2022. Her collection, Collateral damage: 48 stories (Snake Nation Press, 2022), won SNP’s annual fiction prize and was followed by Sarra Copia: A locked-in life (WTAW Press, 2023), a novella-in-flash about a Jewish poet in 17th-century Venice, which Nancy presented at London’s Jewish Book Week in March 2025. Nancy has taught flash fiction to adults and teens both in the United States and in the UK. She lives in New York City with her husband, Malcolm Spector, and their cat, Nova.

Rotem Moscovich

Rotem Moscovich is executive editorial director, picture books, at Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers. She edited the Caldecott Medal–winning Hot dog by Doug Salati, the Geisel-winning The watermelon seed by Greg Pizzoli, the hilarious Mother Bruce and We don’t eat our classmates by Ryan T. Higgins, the inimitable Drawn together by Minh Lê and Dan Santat, as well as the New York Times bestselling The magical yet by Angela DiTerlizzi and Lorena Alvarez Gomez. She also edited The last stand by Antwan Eady and Jarrett & Jerome Pumphrey, which garnered seven starred reviews and an Ezra Jack Keats Honor, as well as A flame burns on by Richard Ho and Carmel Ben Ami. Rotem had the pleasure of earning a master’s degree from the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College and lives in New York City.

Yevgenia Nayberg

Yevgenia Nayberg is an Eisner Award-nominated author and illustrator. She has received multiple awards for her picture book illustrations, including a Sydney Taylor Honor and two Notable recognitions. She is the creator of the critically acclaimed graphic memoir Chernobyl, life, and other disasters. Born and raised in Kyiv, she now lives in New York City.

Matthew Lippman

Matthew Lippman is the author of nine poetry collections. In 2027, his book Cry baby cry will be published by Four Way Books. His collection King of the Jews was published by Ben Yehuda Press and was a finalist for the 2026 National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry. His collection We are all sleeping with our sneakers on (2024) was published by Four Way Books. His previous collection, Mesmerizingly sadly beautiful (2020), was published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize.

Owen Lewis

Owen Lewis is the author of four collections of poetry and three chapbooks, most recently A prayer of six wings (Dos Madres Press, 2025), a finalist for the Patterson Book Prize. The collection was translated into Hebrew by Daffi Kurdish and published in Israel by Keshev Publishing House (2026). His prior collection, Field light, was a “Must Read” selection of the New England Book Awards. Honors include the 2024 E. E. Cummings Prize, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize, the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. At Columbia University, he is a professor of psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and teaches narrative medicine.

Howard Lovy

Howard Lovy is editor in chief of Canary Publishing, a nonprofit trade press launched in September 2026 as a home for Jewish voices that mainstream publishing has sidelined. A veteran journalist with more than 40 years of experience, he was among the first to chronicle the marginalization of Jewish voices in his op-eds, which appear in Jewish and mainstream publications, and in his widely read Substack newsletter, Emet-Truth. As a developmental editor, he specializes in Jewish and Israeli fiction and nonfiction.

Ben Resnick

Benjamin Resnick is the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center in New York. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, he lives in Pelham with his family. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and elsewhere. His first novel, Next stop, won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen is the host of The Five Books podcast, interviewing Jewish authors about the books near and dear to them. She has toggled between the publishing world and Jewish communal life. After graduating from Barnard College, she was co-director of the Jewish student group Lights-in-Action and then worked as a literary agent for nearly ten years. She has served on the boards of numerous Jewish institutions, including the Natan Fund, where she currently chairs its Notable Books Award committee. She has taught writing classes for Gotham Writers Workshop and written reviews for Kirkus Reviews. Her writing has been published by New York Family Magazine (where she was also a staff writer and editor of its parenting blogs), The New York Jewish Week, The Forward, and others.

Yardena Schwartz

Yardena Schwartz is an award-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated producer, and author of Ghosts of a holy war: The 1929 massacre in Palestine that ignited the Arab-Israeli conflict. Her reporting from four continents has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, The Economist, TIME, National Geographic, and Foreign Policy. She was based in Israel from 2013 to 2023. Yardena previously worked at NBC News and MSNBC. She graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School in 2011, received an Emmy nomination for her work at MSNBC in 2013, and received the Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Magazine Reporting in 2016.

Yardena now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and children. Ghosts of a holy war is her first book.

Farin Schlussel

Farin Schlussel is the director of marketing for Avery Books and Tarcher, two imprints of Penguin Publishing Group at Penguin Random House. She has been with Avery since she began her publishing career in 2012. As the director of marketing, Farin executes and oversees bespoke campaigns using the most current marketing platforms and data to get books in front of the readers who need them.

Farin has spearheaded the campaigns for the New York Times bestsellers Atomic habits by James Clear, Good energy by Dr. Casey Means, The myth of normal by Dr. Gabor Maté, and The book of joy by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as multiple projects with Adeena Sussman, Rabbi Steve Leder, Dr. Lisa Mosconi, and Dr. Terry Wahls. Farin is also the celebration co-chair of Jewish Connections @ PRH, an employee resource group established in the months after October 7, and spends much of the year putting together events that encourage Jewish joy and illuminate the Jewish experience, both to members and to PRH as a whole.

When she is not cheerleading the latest Avery and Tarcher titles, you can find her snuggling with her rescue dog, Penny, or seeing theatre.

Kathleen Schmidt

Kathleen Schmidt is a highly respected figure in book publishing. As the founder of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations, she brings extensive experience across the industry, including public relations, literary agency, acquisitions, editing, and ghostwriting, to every project she takes on. Her career spans 30 years of creating and leading impactful, strategic global media, marketing, and branding campaigns for politicians, A-list celebrities, athletes, and other high-profile personalities. To date, she has contributed to 50 New York Times bestsellers. Kathleen is also the author of the widely read Substack newsletter Publishing confidential and earned her MBA from Southern New Hampshire University in May 2024. She is an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and lives on the Jersey Shore with her husband, young adult children, and two Boston terriers.

Roy Schwartz

Roy Schwartz is a writer, author, and pop culture historian.

A board member of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), his work often focuses on the intersection of comics and Jewish culture. He is the author of Is Superman circumcised? The complete Jewish history of the world’s greatest hero and other books. A former regular contributor to CNN, his work has also appeared in New York Daily News, Smithsonian Magazine, Literary Hub, Philosophy Now, The Forward, Tablet, Jerusalem Post, IGN, Comics Beat, and Marvel Comics.

Roy is the co-producer of the documentary JewCE: The Jewish comics experience and two PBS specials, Comic culture: An xciting conversation with Chris Claremont and Comic culture: The Jack Kirby way. He is the co-curator of the 2023 exhibition “JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience” at the Center for Jewish History in New York, traveling internationally through 2028; lead curator of the 2026 exhibition “Icons in Ink” at the Maltz Museum in Cleveland; and co-curator of the 2026 exhibition “The Jack Kirby Way: How a boy from the Lower East Side became the king of comics” at AJHS.

Roy led the high-profile campaign to co-name a New York City street “Jack Kirby Way” after the legendary comic book creator and pop art pioneer.6.

Vesper Stamper

Born in Germany and raised in New York City, Vesper Stamper writes and illustrates novels, award-winning picture books, and graphic novels that tell, through both words and pictures, stories of history’s rhymes and journeys through dark forests. Vesper is a National Book Award nominee, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, a Morris Award finalist, a Golden Kite Honor Book recipient, and a Sydney Taylor Book Award winner, among many other honors.

Vesper completed all of her art education along the 7th Avenue 1 train, as an alumna of LaGuardia High School of the Arts, with a BFA in Illustration from Parsons and an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from the School of Visual Arts, where she was also a professor of illustration. She speaks (in varying degrees of a Staten Island/Manhattan accent) at conferences and institutions at home and abroad, with the aim of cultivating a rehumanized worldview through artistic thinking. She grows roses and her library on a mountain with her husband, filmmaker Ben Stamper.

Jill Santopolo

Jill Santopolo is the internationally best-selling author of Stars in an Italian Sky, Everything After, More Than Words and theThe Light We Lost, which was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and has been optioned for film. Her books have been translated into more than 35 languages and have been named to the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Apple, and Indie Bound bestseller lists. She is also the author of the Alec Flint Mysteries, the Sparkle Spa series, and the Follow Your Heart books. Jill holds a BA in English Literature from Columbia University, an MFA in Writing for Children from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a certificate in Intellectual Property Law from NYU. She is the publisher of Philomel, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, where she edits many critically-acclaimed, award-winning, and best-selling books including She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, Girling Up by Mayim Bialik, Calling All Minds by Temple Grandin, Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Rafael Lopez, and Superheroes Are Everywhere by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Mechal Roe. Jill has worked as a thesis advisor at The New School in their MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults and was on the faculty of the Columbia Publishing Course. She was also an adjunct professor at McDaniel College, where she helped develop the curriculum for their certificate program in Writing for Children. Jill has traveled all over the U.S.—and to Canada and Europe—to speak about writing and storytelling. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter.

Liza Wiemer

Liza Wiemer is an award-winning educator. Her second novel, The assignment, was published by Delacorte Press and has received 13 honors, including being named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book. The assignment has been translated into Russian, Polish, Italian, and Korean and has been optioned for film. In addition, Liza has published two adult nonfiction books and had several short stories included in the New York Times bestselling Small miracles series. Since August 2020, she has presented over 800 talks and workshops across the globe. She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR, BBC, and ABC and gave a TEDx talk at UW-Madison. She is the author of two picture books, Out and about: A tale of giving and We are each other’s hope: The story of Elie Wiesel, the latter of which is scheduled for publication in September 2027. She writes a syndicated monthly kidlit column for Jewish newspapers and serves on the board of the Holocaust Education Resource Center in Milwaukee. Liza was named one of “The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2021” by The Algemeiner. A graduate of UW-Madison, Liza has two married sons and seven grandchildren and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband, Jim.

Rabbi Diana Fersko

Rabbi Fersko is the chief Jewish life officer of the MM JCC Manhattan, the world’s leading Jewish community center. An internationally recognized author, speaker, and thought leader, she is a defining voice in the contemporary Jewish world, known for her clarity, compassion, and ability to bring Jewish tradition into meaningful dialogue with modern life. She is the author of the painfully prescient book We need to talk about antisemitism and the co-host of the popular podcast Golda Girls. A catalyst for urgent moral conversation, Rabbi Fersko is helping to shape the future of Jewish life in New York City.

Elyssa Friedland

Elyssa Friedland is the USA Today bestselling author of six novels and a children’s picture book. She is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia Law School. Elyssa worked as an associate at a major law firm before turning to writing full-time. She has taught an undergraduate course at Yale called “Contemporary Novel Writing” for several years. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Literary Hub, POPSUGAR, Real Simple, Writer’s Digest, and Bustle. Elyssa is a founding member of Artists Against Antisemitism, a nonprofit organization initiated by a group of contemporary female authors devoted to spreading light to offset hate. She contributed an essay to the USA Today bestselling anthology On being Jewish now. Elyssa resides in New York City with her husband and three children.

Jacqueline Friedland

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of both historical and contemporary women’s fiction. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced as a commercial litigator for as long as she could stand it. She then returned to school to earn her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been writing ever since.

Jackie’s books have been awarded the 2020 and 2021 gold medals in fiction from Readers’ Favorite. Her novels have also been named the 2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year, the SheReads Best Book Club Pick of 2021, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star finalist for 2022. She regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears at schools and other locations as a guest lecturer. Her newest novel, Breathing under water, was published by Harper Muse in August 2026. The book received a starred review from Booklist and has already been featured by many media outlets, including People, the Jewish Joy Book Club, Zibby Owens’ Most Anticipated Reads, Fox News Tampa, and The Times of Israel.

Jackie lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband, four children, and two dogs.

Naomi Firestone-Teeter

Originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Naomi is the CEO of Jewish Book Council. She graduated from Emory University with degrees in English and art history and also studied at University College London. Prior to her roles as executive director and now CEO, Naomi served as the founding editor of the JBC website and managing editor of Jewish Book World. She has also overseen JBC’s digital initiatives and developed JBC’s Visiting Scribe series and Unpacking the Book: Jewish Writers in Conversation. She sits on the board of Jewish Creativity International.

Naomi was named one of the 2019 36 Under 36 by The New York Jewish Week, one of the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life in 2018 by The Algemeiner, and was included on IZZY’s 2020 Global Jewish 100 list of people around the world who are moving Jewish culture forward.

Luda Isakharov

Luda Isakharov is associate director at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), where she leads national research and advocacy efforts addressing antisemitism and Jewish inclusion in the arts and cultural sectors. As part of ADL’s Ratings & Assessments Institute (RAI), she leads the State of the Arts initiative, which evaluates how leading museums, cultural institutions, and the broader arts and entertainment industries address antisemitism, foster Jewish representation, and promote institutional accountability.

Her work focuses on translating research into meaningful institutional change through public advocacy, strategic partnerships, and engagement with cultural leaders. Previously, Luda served in ADL’s Washington, D.C., regional office, where she led campus advocacy efforts and supported state legislative advocacy. She brings a background in higher education advocacy, coalition building, and institutional accountability to her work advancing Jewish inclusion across the arts and cultural landscape.

Lesléa Newman

Lesléa Newman has created 90 books for readers of all ages, including the memoirs in verse I carry my mother and I wish my father; the children’s books Something sweet: A sitting shiva story (illustrated by Sarita Rich), Joyful song: A naming story (illustrated by Susan Gal), The babka sisters (illustrated by Tika and Tata Bobokhidze), and Gittel’s journey: An Ellis Island story (illustrated by Amy June Bates).

Her literary awards include two National Jewish Book Awards; the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Gold Medal, Silver Medal, and Body-of-Work Award; the Massachusetts Book Award; and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.

Her newest poetry collection, The last flame last, a suite of 18 poems written in response to October 7 and the worldwide antisemitism that has followed, has just been published.

Erica Rand Silverman

Erica Rand Silverman is vice president of children’s publishing and senior literary agent at Stimola Literary Studio. She represents a highly selective list of authors and illustrators and is known for building a shelf of exceptional illustrated books for children that balance kid appeal with a deep respect for the book as an object and art form. She has launched some of the most exciting new talent in children’s books while also guiding the careers of industry mainstays.

Her clients have received the industry’s highest honors, including the Caldecott Medal and Honor, the Schneider Award, the Geisel Honor, The New York Times Best Illustrated Award, the Society of Illustrators Dilys Evans Founders Award, and the Ezra Jack Keats Writing and Illustration Awards, among others. Their books have appeared on the Indie and New York Times bestseller lists and have reached readers in many countries around the world.

A former classroom teacher, Erica remains committed to the intersection of children, education, and books through her work on the board of Every Child a Reader.

Leila Sales

Leila Sales is the editorial director at Kar-Ben Publishing, the world's largest publisher of Jewish children's books. Previously, she spent many years as an acquiring editor at Viking Children's Books, where she managed classic children's book properties and edited award-winning and bestselling authors, including Max Brallier, Viola Davis, Gayle Forman, Greg Pizzoli, Alan Silberberg, and others. She is herself the author of many books for readers of all ages, as well as the founder of the Book Engineer, a boutique book development consultancy. Leila grew up in Newton, Massachusetts; graduated from the University of Chicago; and now lives in Austin, Texas.

The 2026 Jewish Writers Mifgash Speakers

The 2026 Mifgash Team

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