Reading Series: November 15: Avia Tadmor, Jill Bialosky, and Irena Klepfisz
Register for this reading here.
You can order books from our readers here, with a percentage of every purchase going to support Yetzirah.
Avia Tadmor is the author of Song in Tammuz (Tupelo Press, 2026), winner of the International Berkshire Prize. Her poetry appears in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The New Republic, Best New Poets, and New England Review, among other publications. Avia received fellowships and awards from Yaddo, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Poets & Writers, and was named a Gregory Djanikian Scholar by the Adroit Journal. Previously, Avia taught writing at Columbia University, where she co-directed the Medical Humanities First-Year Writing Courses as well as the Columbia Artist/Teachers Program, promoting no-cost arts education in schools and community organizations in NYC. Avia is a graduate of the United World College program, educating for constructive dialogue, peace, and a sustainable future. Currently, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University. Born in Jerusalem, she lives in New York. Website: www.aviatadmor.com.
Jill Bialosky’s most recent book of poetry is Mock Heart: New & Selected Poems. She is the author of Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and four other acclaimed collections of poetry, four critically acclaimed novels, most recently, The Deceptions, a finalist for the Gotham Book Award, and a three memoirs, The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother, Poetry Will Save Your Life, and New York Times bestselling memoir History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, O Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Paris Review and Best American Poetry among others. She co-edited with Helen Schulman the anthology, Wanting a Child. She is an Executive Editor and Vice President at W. W. Norton & Company. She was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.
Irena Klepfisz is a lesbian/activist poet. She was a co-founder of the ground breaking Conditions magazine and a co-founder of the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation (JWCEO). She co-edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology, contributed to Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology and wrote the introduction to Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers and served as the Yiddish editor for the Jewish feminist magazine Bridges. For her poetry, she has received a NYS CAPS grant and NEA fellowship. Her most recent collection, Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems,1971–2021 (Wesleyan UP), was a finalist of the 2022 National Book Award in poetry and the winner of the 2023 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. In 1923, a bilingual edition of her poetry and prose, Pomiędzy światami / Between Worlds was published in Poland.
As we want our events to be accessible to all, our tickets are offered free of charge. Yet if you’re able to donate—perhaps $18, or some multiple of 18, which in Jewish tradition signifies wishing long life and good luck to the recipient of the gift—all proceeds will go directly toward supporting Yetzirah, making more events like this possible. Yetzirah is a nonprofit organization, and any gift you make is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law.
