Alicia Partnoy, a survivor of Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War” (1976-1983), is an Argentine author, activist, and scholar who lives in Los Angeles, California. Her best known work isThe Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, which was introduced as evidence in the trials against the perpetrators in charge of the secret detention camps in her hometown and in the South of the country. 

Rising to prominence as a journalist in Weimar-era Berlin, Gabriele Tergit, née Elise Hirschmann (1893–1982), was an important chronicler of German-Jewish life. In her journalistic writings and novels, Tergit wrote biting social satires, sweeping panoramic novels, and lucid, hard-hitting commentaries on current events. A liberal whose writings reveal her strong commitments to social justice, women’s rights, and humanism, Tergit was forced to flee Germany in 1933 and settled permanently in London in 1938.

This Mother’s Day, explore Jewish motherhood in all its nuance with books that go far beyond the clichés.

As Berest searches for the sender of a mysterious postcard, she uncovers deeper questions about identity, intergenerational trauma, and what it means to carry a name.

JWA talks to Elana Sztokman about her new book,In My Jewish State, which explores her political and religious transformation and her work for a better future in Israel. 

Barbara Ostfeld became the first ordained female cantor at age 22, serving a number of temples in her tenure. Ostfeld was passionate about music from a young age and finds joy in her work through poetry and musical theory alike. She is also a writer; her essays on feminism and cantorial work have been printed in several publications. 

JWA talks with Jennifer Lang about her new memoir,Landed: A yogi's memoir in pieces & poses

Angèle Guéron was an educator in Edirne, once an important city in the late Ottoman Empire, now a border town in northwestern Turkey. The eloquent journal she kept during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) provides a rare glimpse of life in a besieged Ottoman city and the struggles of a Sephardi Jewish woman against a conservative communal patriarchy. 

JWA talks to author, speaker, and writer/producer Marra Gad. 

Seeing a Jewish woman defy efforts to silence her was life-giving.

Joan Nestle is an activist, writer, and educator known for her work on lesbian identity, sexuality, culture, and history, among other topics. Nestle also co-founded the New York-based Lesbian Herstory Archives, the largest lesbian-focused archive in the world, in 1975. Her essays and stories, which she began writing in the late 1970s, have been published in three anthologies.

JWA chats with author Jennifer Lang about her forthcoming book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir in miniature. 

Born to two Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia, Helen Epstein has spent her life building an impressive journalistic career. She has also explored her own lived experiences, as well as the repercussions of intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust, on both her own family and the families of other survivors, in several memoirs and non-fiction books.

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Jean Trounstine on July 21, 2000, in Lowell, Massachusetts for the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Trounstine details her Jewish background in Cincinnati, how it shaped her political lens, and her prison reform work, including theater productions with incarcerated women.

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Galina Nizhnikov in Peabody, Massachusetts on January 12, 2003, as part of the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Nizhnikov talks about her upbringing in Russia, her family's Jewish pride, experiences with workplace antisemitism, involvement with refuseniks, the decision to leave Russia, and the struggles they faced to secure their departure.

Deborah Ross interviewed Susan Stamberg on March 28, 2011, in Washington DC, as part of the Washington D.C. Stories Oral History Project. Stamberg shares her groundbreaking experience as the first female national news anchor, highlighting her successful career in interviewing and her passion for the future of radio.

In the year after co-writing a memoir, also the year of shmita, I learned how to let go of my failures and begin anew. 

One of New York’s most distinct Jewish cultural voices, Roz Chast is most famous for herNew Yorkercartoons over the past four decades. Her works range from whimsical, irreverent, and quirky to poignant and heartbreaking, and she is widely considered one of the most comically ingenious and satirically edgy visual interpreters of everyday life.

JWA talks to artist Riva Lehrer about her recent memoir,Golem Girl, and the way her disabled, queer, and Jewish identities intersect.