How to Spell Chanukah...And Other Holiday Dilemmas (20 page)

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

ELISA ALBERT
is the author of the short-story collection
How This Night Is Different
. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
Washington Square, Pindeldyboz, Nextbook, Jewcy,
and the anthologies
Body Outlaws
and
The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt
. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

STEVE ALMOND
is the author of two story collections,
My Life in Heavy Metal
and
The Evil B. B. Chow,
and a nonfiction book,
Candy­freak.
He lives outside Boston.

KAREN E. BENDER
is the author of
Like Normal People,
a novel. She is the coeditor of the anthology
Choice
. Her fiction has appeared in magazines including the
New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares,
the
Harvard Review
 and has been anthologized in
Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories,
and the Pushcart Prize series. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she and her husband, Robert Siegel, spend the greater part of the year listening to their children's Chanukah gift requests.

JOSHUA BRAFF
was born and raised in New Jersey. He studied education at New York University and graduated in 1991. In 1997 he received an MFA in creative writing/fiction from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California. His first novel,
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green,
was nominated for a 2005 Quill Award and made the
San Francisco Chronicle
Best Seller List. It was also one of
Booklist
's top ten first novels for 2004. His work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. He lives with his wife and their two children in Oakland, California, and is currently working on his second novel.

LAURA DAVE
is the author of the novel
London Is the Best City in America.
Her writing has appeared in
Self, Glamour, ESPN: The Magazine,
and the
New York Observer.
  To learn how Laura spends the other Jewish holidays, please visit her Web site:
www.lauradave.com
.

JENNIFER GILMORE
is the author of the novel
Golden Country
.  Her work has also appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including
Alaska Quarterly Review, Allure, BookForum, Cutbank, Nerve,
the
Stranger
, and
Salon.
She works in publishing and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

JILL KARGMAN
cowrote the novels
The Right Address, Wolves in Chic Clothing, Bittersweet Sixteen,
and
Summer Intern.
Her first solo novel,
Momzillas,
is a dark comedy about competitive type A moms on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She has written for magazines including
Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Teen Vogue, British GQ, Travel + Leisure,
and
Town & Country.
She lives in New York City with her husband and three children.

AMY KLEIN
is a journalist and essayist who has worked in Jerusalem, New York, and Los Angeles, where she currently resides. She has written for numerous Jewish publications, including the
Jerusalem Post,
the
Forward,
the
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles,
and
Hadassah
magazine, as well as mainstream newspapers such as the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Chicago Sun-Times,
and the
Los Angeles Daily News.
Her essay “True Confessions of a J-date Addict” appeared in the best-selling anthology
The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt.
She received her MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

ADAM LANGER
is an author, playwright, and journalist. His novels include
Crossing California, The Washington Story,
and the forthcoming
Ellington Boulevard.
He was born Jewish and has been writing since kindergarten but has been a “Jewish writer” for only about three years.

MAMEVE MEDWED
(named for two grandmothers, Mamie and Eva) is the author of the novels
Mail, Host Family, The End of an Error, How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life,
and the forthcoming
Men and Their Mothers.
Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in, among other publications,
Yankee, Redbook, Playgirl,
the
Boston Globe, Ascent,
the
Missouri Review,
the
Washington Post, Confrontation
, and
Newsday.
Born in Bangor, Maine, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

TOVA MIRVIS
is the author of two novels,
The Ladies Auxiliary,
published in 1999, and
The Outside World,
published in 2004. Her essays and fiction have appeared in various anthologies and in newspapers such as the
Forward
and the
New York Times Book Review.
She has an MFA in fiction writing from the Columbia School of the Arts and lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and their two children.

JOSHUA NEUMAN
is the publisher of
Heeb
magazine.
A graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School, he has taught undergraduate courses in the philosophy of religion at New York University, written for
Slate,
ESPN, and Comedy Central, and appeared on VH1, Court TV, and National Public Radio. His first book,
The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies
, was published in 2005.

ERIC ORNER
is a cartoonist and animation artist whose comics and graphic short stories have appeared in
Newsweek,
the
New Republic,
and McSweeney's
Future Dictionary of America.
He has worked on a number of animated features, including a stint as an artist on DisneyToon Studios' upcoming Tinker Bell movie. A feature film based on Eric's widely syndicated alt-weekly comic strip “The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green” was released nationally in 2006.

PETER ORNER
is the author of
Esther Stories
and the novel
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo.
His work has appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly
and the
Paris Review.
Orner is the recipient of the Samuel Goldberg and Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in San Francisco. His middle name is Maxwell.

JOANNA SMITH RAKOFF
is the editor of
Nextbook.org
. She has written for
Vogue,
the
New York Times,
and many other publications. She's completing a novel set in Brooklyn.

BEN SCHRANK
is the autor of the novels
Miracle Man
and
Consent
and is the publisher of Razorbill, a children's imprint at Penguin. He is at work on a third novel.

EDWARD SCHWARZSCHILD
is the author of
Responsible Men,
which was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2005 by the
San Francisco Chronicle
and was a finalist for the Samuel Goldberg and Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction. Schwarzschild is an associate professor at the University at Albany, SUNY; his book
The Family Diamond
has just been published. You can read more about him and his work at
www.thefamilydiamond.com
.

ROBERT ANTHONY SIEGEL
is the author of the novels
All The Money in the World
and
All Will Be Revealed.
He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he lives with his wife, the writer Karen E. Bender, and their two children, Jonah and Maia.

JONATHAN TROPPER
is the author of the novels
How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, The Book of Joe,
which was a Book Sense selection, and
Plan B.
He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, and their children in Westchester, New York, where he teaches writing at Manhattanville College. Three of his novels are currently in development as feature films. Jonathan is currently at work on his next novel, and can be contacted through his Web site at
www.jonathantropper.com
.