Jessica Jacobs (Founder, Executive Director, & Board Member), a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), both named one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year; and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and is the co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse, 2020). 

Jessica holds an M.F.A. from Purdue University, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Sycamore Review, and a B.A. from Smith College. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared widely and she offers readings, talks, and workshops around the country, teaching for programs including the Fine Arts Work Center and the Collegeville Institute.

She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.

Daniel Kraft (Program Manager) is a writer, poet, translator, and essayist. He holds a master’s degree in Jewish studies from Harvard Divinity School, where he was a resident at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. His poems and essays appear in a number of publications including Image, Jewish Currents, EcoTheo Review, and Peripheries; his translations of Yiddish, along with brief personal and critical essays, can be found in his newsletter, Di Freyd Fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, at danielkraft.substack.com. In addition to writing and translating, Daniel has worked as a full-time Director of Education at synagogues across the American South, and as an educator at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland.

Kylee Rieger (Program & Social Media Assistant) is a poet, musician, and performer. Before the pandemic, she trained as a ballet dancer with the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City. Stepping away from dance, she found a new home in poetry, songwriting, and performance—new forms of movement and storytelling that helped her reclaim her voice. In 2025, she earned her BA in English Language & Literature from Smith College, with a concentration in Poetry. During that time, she began writing Ballad From Between Two Mirrors, a collection that explores transformation, memory, identity, and collective longing.

Kyra Lisse (Conference Director) is thrilled to serve the Yetzirah community as conference director. A writer, editor, and unofficial Buffy scholar, she holds a BA in creative writing and Latin from Franklin & Marshall College and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. In addition to her work at Yetzirah, Kyra is also assistant managing editor at Ayin Press, and has previously served as associate editor at Jewish Book Council and as a nonfiction reader for Orison Books. Her own work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ghost City Review, HAD, SWWIM, Paper Brigade, New Voices, Sinister Wisdom, and Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, among other places. Kyra grew up outside of Philly and now lives in Lancaster, PA. 

Shelby Sizemore (Conference Manager) is a writer and researcher from Asheville North Carolina. Her fiction work has been published in Headwaters, UNC-Asheville’s literary magazine. Her research essays have been published in the Langland Review and the UNCA Undergraduate Research Journal. She is currently looking towards graduate school to pursue a Masters Degree in Library Sciences. In her spare time she tends to her many house plants.

Cory Weller (Conference Photographer) is a biologist who loves to take photos. He is currently working in a pharmaceutical lab, and hopes to pursue genomic biology. He grew up taking photos with his Dad, who is a medical photographer. He loves to photograph concerts, sports, and events, because they allow for capturing raw emotion frozen in time. Cory has photographed Yetzirah for three years, and while not a poet, enjoys embracing a week of shared creativity with a Jewish community.

Dan Rosenberg (Reading Series Co-Host) is the author of Bassinet (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2022),  cadabra (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2015), and The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press, 2012). He has also written two chapbooks, Thigh’s Hollow (Omnidawn, 2015) and A Thread of Hands (Tilt Press, 2010), and he co-translated Miklavž Komelj’s Hippodrome (Zephyr Press, 2016). His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest.

Rosenberg holds a B.A. from Tufts University, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. from The University of Georgia, where he was a Presidential Fellow. He is the chair of the English department at Wells College, where he  teaches literature, creative writing, and translation theory. He also coordinates the Wells College Visiting Writers Series and edits the Wells College Press Chapbook Contest. Rosenberg lives in Ithaca, NY, with his wife, essayist and poet Alicia Rebecca Myers, and their son, Miles.

Yerra Sugarman (Board Secretary & Reading Series Co-Host) is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, February 2022); The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow Press, 2008), poems from which received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow Press, 2002), which won PEN American Center’s PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. Her chapbook From Her Lips Like Steam was published by the Aureole Press at the University of Toledo in December 2019. Other honors she has earned include a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant for Creative Writers, the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, a Chicago Literary Award, and a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Award.

She has taught creative writing and literature at the University of Toledo, the University of Houston, Rutgers University, the City College of New York, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and at New York University. She earned an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University, and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. A daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was born in Toronto, and lives in New York City.

Joanna Chen‘s (Reading Series International Host) full-length poetry translations include Hunting in America (Penguin, winner of The Paper Brigade Award for New Israeli Fiction), Less Like a Dove (Shearsman Books), Frayed Light (Wesleyan University Press, finalist for The Jewish Book Award), and but first I call your name (Shearsman Books). She is also the translator of My Wild Garden (Penguin/Random House) Her work has been published in Asymptote, Waxwing, Mantis and La Piccioletta Barca, among numerous others. Her poetry, essays and interviews have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Monthly, Lilith and Narratively, among several others. She teaches literary translation at The Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv.

Richard Chess (Founding Board Member & Book Club Host) is the author of four books of poetry, Love Nailed to the Doorpost (University of Tampa Press 2017), Tekiah (University of Georgia Press 1996; republished by University of Tampa Press 2000); Chair in the Desert (University of Tampa Press 2000); and Third Temple (University of Tampa Press 2006). His poems have been anthologized in Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Bearing Witness: Twenty Years of Image Journal, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in Best American Spiritual Writing 2005. His essays have been included in Stars Shall Bend Their Voices: Poets’ Favorite Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 27 Views of Asheville, Far from the Center of Ambition, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to Close Reading, the blog hosted by Slant Books. He was a member of the core arts faculty at the Brandeis Bardin Institute for three years, after which he was on the faculty of the Jewish Arts Institute at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. He is Professor Emeritus at UNC Asheville. He directed UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years. He also played a leading role in UNC Asheville’s contemplative inquiry initiative. He is a founding board member of Yetzirah and the host of the Yetzirah Book Club.

Kristen Lopez (Intern, UNC-Asheville) was born in New Haven, CT, but has since relocated to beautiful Asheville, NC. She lives in her home with her pets and husband, and is very happy. While she enjoys many activities, her favorite things to do are read, work in the garden, work with clay, and spend time with her dogs. Kristen is a dual major in both Economics and Art at the University of North Carolina, and will be graduating in 2025.