Michelle Brafman’s characters are under water. Literally. Set in a pleasant suburb, the novel is ostensibly about a summer swim league, but is really an exploration of the intimate lives of two couples who don’t fully understand the complicated ways in which they are connected. Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough talks to the author about how Swimming With Ghosts (Prospect Park Books, $26.00) makes waves.  YZM: So why set a novel in the world of amateur swimming?  MB: I swam competitively until well into my 20s and then after my husband and I had kids, we spent fourteen ye ..read more

The first thing I did when I got the call in March a year ago that my biopsy was positive for breast cancer was to make two lists. On one list were all the people I knew who had breast cancer and died. On the other list were those I knew who had it and survived. There were way too many people on both lists, but since this was a time for being honest with myself, I had to acknowledge that there were more on the “died” list—including some very close friends.  My mother, however, was one of those who survived. Ever since she got breast cancer at 72, I have called it “old lady breast cancer ..read more

About Us: Independent, Jewish & frankly feminist since 1976, Lilith’s mission is to be the feminist change-agent in and for the Jewish community: amplifying Jewish feminist voices, creating an inclusive and positive Judaism, spurring gender consciousness in the Jewish world and empowering women, girls and trans and nonbinary people of every background to envision and enact change in their own lives and the larger community. About the Role: Lilith magazine, a small but mighty Jewish feminist magazine, is looking to hire a digital strategist for Summer 2023. We’re looking for an experienced ..read more

The twins Bronka and JoJo Lubinski are at the center of Shadows We Carry (Spark Press, $17.95), a post-Holocaust novel set in the 1960’s that grapples with the insidious power of long-held family secrets, and the confusion of religious identities and bloodlines. Author Meryl Ain talks to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about how the scars of World War II played out in the revolutionary societal changes of the time. YZM: You’ve said this is a sequel to your first novel, The Takeaway Men; what about those characters made you want to return to them?  MA: First and foremost, ma ..read more

Do artists have a responsibility to address social issues? If they do, can their creativity motivate us to heal our world? Two exhibitions at the Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York offer new artistic responses to these questions.  The works in these two exhibitions share a common purpose, but the scale, forms, materials, and personal outlooks vary. They are rooted in Jewish text, ethics, wisdom, and family history, while exerting a universal message of justice, compassion, and healing. One Nation and Tzedek Boxes exemplify the Heller ..read more

A girl living in dread of the Son of Sam, another whose father commits a terrible crime and still another who is intent on getting revenge for her mother’s rape. These are just a few of the characters in the short story collection My Daughter’s Boyfriends (Untreed Reads, $18). Author Penny Jackson, whose story by the same name won first prize in Lilith’s 2021 annual fiction contest talks to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about the sources of her inspiration and why she loves the short story form.  Yona Zeldis McDonough: You’ve worked in so many genres: novels, poetry, essays and pla ..read more

Daughter of the Wicked is Shanit Keter Schwartz’s story. This solo piece, written and performed by Schwartz, follows her journey to her homeland in Israel as she searches for her sister who disappeared in the Yemenite Missing Children Affair. Daughter of the Wicked premiered in Los Angeles in 2022 and will be presented by Lions Bay Productions at New York City Center with a run from April 15 to May 15. It features a soundscape with Yemenite in drums and flutes by composer Lilo Fedida as well as cello compositions by Oscar Nominee and Grammy Award winner James Newton Howard. Liba Vaynberg inter ..read more

The way two very different women find common ground is at the heart and soul of the novel Never Meant to Meet You (Montlake, $12.99) and its two authors—one white and Jewish, the other Black—talk to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about how they came together to write it.   Yona Zeldis McDonough: How did you two meet and what inspired you to write a novel together?  Can you talk about what that’s like?  Alli Frank & Asha Youmans: We spent four years together working in the same PreK-5 private school in Seattle, Washington. Alli was the Assistant Head of School ..read more

Long-time sexual health advocate Martha Kempner believes that humor can be a powerful educational tool. This is why her weekly blog, Sex on Wednesday, pours a generous helping of snark on coverage of topics like the prevalence of masturbation while working at home or the shifting political terrain that made Congressional candidate Mike Itkis’ hand-crafted sex tape the centerpiece of his mid-term run for office. But the two-year-old blog can also be serious–very serious–as it spotlights rightwing efforts to curtail sex education in public schools, restrict access to contraception, limit abortio ..read more

Davon Loeb’s The In-Betweens, is aptly called “A Lyrical Memoir.” It is dedicated “To all the bodies that became my memoir and to my wife and children.” Written in short, standalone, poetic essays, the book opens with the scenes in which Loeb’s parents met and fell in love. The sense of romance and mystery and unanswered questions Loeb introduces at the outset waft across the rest of the memoir. He imagines what it was like between his white biological Jewish father, and the Black woman who raised him. He paints the love affair that resulted in his birth, and their efforts to avoid the “adulte ..read more