Rokhl Brokhes was born in Minsk in 1880, the daughter of a Hebrew scholar who instructed her to read holy texts, an unusual skill for a Jewish girl at the time. After her father died when she was a child, Brokhes became a seamstress and published her first story at age nineteen. She enjoyed moderate acclaim by publishing in periodicals like Der Yud, Der Fraynd, and Di Tsukunft, but only published one full-length collection in 1922. The critic Zalmen Reyzen described her as a “a psychological realist with an inclination towards lyricism.” Her work was known for depicting the lives of working-class women and their families, as well as frankly portraying abuse and powerlessness. She died in the Minsk Ghetto in 1942.
Jonathan daCosta presently resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin. When people ask where he grew up he replies that he didn’t. He has lived in seven states, nineteen cities and in Israel on Kibbutz Urim. His holds a degree in Environmental Studies from San Jose State University. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a Nahal paratrooper. He has been a builder for much of his life, building homes of his own design. He has two wonderful children and a dog named Jack. His father was a rocket scientist and his mother a speech therapist. He has written three books for which he is seeking a publisher, and can be reached at Myplumberjon@gmail.com.
Patrycja Dolowy is a Polish Jewish writer, artist, and activist. She has an MSc from Warsaw University, 2002, a PhD from the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2007, and an art diploma with distinction from the Academy of Art and Photography in Wroclaw, 2005. She is interested in the problems of difficult memory and heritage. She is the author and co-author of several books, including the prize-winning I’ll Be Back When You’re Asleep (2019) and Treasures (2022), as well as short stories, essays and theatre plays. A winner of the Karol Sabath Award (2011), honorable award Kontrapunkt (2015), The Warsaw Literary Premiere Award of August 2019, European Jewish Writers in Translation (2021), and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising medal awarded by the Association of Jewish Combatants and Victims of the WWII. She has received stipends from the Polish Ministry of Culture, Asylum Arts, and Tarbut Fellowship. She is a lecturer at Artes Liberales of Warsaw University. Since October 2022 she has held the position of the CEO of JCC Warsaw.
Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev (the Soviet Ukraine) and graduate of the Kiev State University and Haifa Technion (Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science). He immigrated to Israel in 1979, served in the IDF reserve infantry units for 13 years, and is a Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. He is the author of 10 books and about 600 articles in paper and online, and has been published in 79 journals in 14 countries in Russian, Hebrew, English, French, and German.
Inna Gordon was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), where she lived until the age of nine. She lived in Kuznechny Lane next to the Kuznechny Market. These places – according to Dostoevsky, the slums of St. Petersburg – were strangely combined with the world of the Jewish village and Yiddish conversations in the family circle. Her teenage years were spent in Tver, then Kalinin. She graduated from a music school (in the piano class) and the theoretical department of a music college. She received her higher education in Rostov-on-Don, at the Rachmaninov Music Academy. She repatriated to Israel in 1979, and for 27 years she worked as a music teacher in five music schools in northern Israel.
Karen Mandell taught literature and writing in Minneapolis and Boston and learned to read and write in Chicago, her hometown. She's written Clicking, interconnected short stories, and Rose Has a New Walker, a book of poetry. Her novel Repairs and Alterations is the story of a Jewish family in Poland before, during, and after WWII. Her stories and poems have appeared in various literary magazines.
Minny Mock (1945-2020) was born in Switzerland and raised in Holland, and immigrated at the age of forty to Israel. She studied cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. At the age of sixty she graduated with a Ph.D in sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She had three children and twelve grand-children. Minny published three books of short stories and a thesis titled The Dynamics of Becoming Orthodox: Dutch Jewish Women Returning to Judaism and How Their Mothers Felt About It.
Jane Mushabac grew up in New York hearing the Ladino of her parents. Her writing was showcased this year at a University of Washington symposium on Sephardic artists. Her many awards include Mellon and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. She writes fiction in Ladino and English. “Song” is based on the Biblical Song of Songs. In her novel, His Hundred Years, A Tale, a Turkish peddler lives by his wits. She has written books on Herman Melville and New York. Her work has been performed on National Public Radio and appeared in many periodicals. It has been translated into six languages.
Kayle Nochomovitz is a writer and professor of Creative Writing and Composition at The City College of New York and Purchase College. In 2019, she won the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award in Fiction for an early draft of Shorebird, her novel in progress. Her writing has also been published in Adelaide magazine. A graduate of Brown University, The New York Studio School, and The City College of New York, she resides in Riverdale, NY.
Ben Portnoy is a retired internist, infectious disease consultant who lives in Houston, Texas. After retiring three years ago, he began writing stories just for fun. A few short items have been published in a neighborhood magazine, The Bellaire Buzz, but Ben has published nothing else aside from medical articles. He is a member of a writing group of retired physicians, and after reading this story to the group he was encouraged to submit it for publication. Ben is flattered to be included in this publication with so many accomplished authors.
Oren Waldman was born in 1973 and raised in Rehovot. He is a lecturer and group leader, and he leads research trips on organizational questions and personal development in Israel and around the world. He lives in Moshav Misgav Dov with his wife and their five children. Panther in Jerusalem, Waldman's debut novel, was published in Hebrew in 2021.
