Reading: Elana Bell, Enid Shomer, Daniel Khalastchi

Elana Bell is the author of Mother Country (BOA Editions 2020), poems about motherhood, fertility, and mental illness. Her debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), received the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and brings her heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to wrestle with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elana teaches poetry to actors at the Juilliard School and is the founder of the Mother Artist Salon. https://www.elanabell.com/ Visit Elana’s profile in Yetzirah’s Discover Jewish Poets database.

The author of five books of poetry, a novel, two collections of short stories and an anthology of erotic poetry, Enid Shomer’s work appears in the New Yorker, Atlantic, Paris Review, Boulevard, Women’s Review of Books and 70-plus anthologies and textbooks. She has taught as visiting writer at Florida State University, the Ohio State University, University of Arkansas and others. In 2012 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council. Visit Enid’s profile in Yetzirah’s Discover Jewish Poets database.

Daniel Khalastchi is an Iraqi Jewish American. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he is the author of four books of poetry—Manoleria, Tradition, American Parables, and The Story of Your Obstinate Survival. Daniel lives in Iowa City where he directs the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Writing. He is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press. Visit Daniel’s profile in Yetzirah’s Discover Jewish Poets database.