Fiction

Galinka Ehrenfest, born in Estonia but raised in the Netherlands, was the chief originator, designer, and illustrator behind “ El Pintor,” a collective that created beautiful and imaginative children’s books published in the Netherlands during World War II. 

Alicia Partnoy, a survivor of Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War” (1976-1983), is an Argentine author, activist, and scholar who lives in Los Angeles, California. Her best known work is The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, which was introduced as evidence in the trials against the perpetrators in charge of the secret detention camps in her hometown and in the South of the country. 

Winner of numerous championship victories, including the triple crown, Helen Hull Jacobs was a force to be reckoned with on the tennis court in the 1920s and 1930s. Her love for the court was only rivaled by her passion for writing, to which she dedicated the second half of her life, writing over 21 books, many about tennis.

Rising to prominence as a journalist in Weimar-era Berlin, Gabriele Tergit, née Elise Hirschmann (1893–1982), was an important chronicler of German-Jewish life. In her journalistic writings and novels, Tergit wrote biting social satires, sweeping panoramic novels, and lucid, hard-hitting commentaries on current events. A liberal whose writings reveal her strong commitments to social justice, women’s rights, and humanism, Tergit was forced to flee Germany in 1933 and settled permanently in London in 1938.

Blanche Bendahan, born in Algeria in 1893, to a Sephardi father and a Catholic mother, became a renowned writer, poet, and political activist. One of her most famous works, Mazaltob, addressed themes of tradition versus modernity, women's rights, and the intersections between Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. She continued to write about her homeland until her death in 1975, combining her multicultural background with modernist style.

Elana Dykewomon was a poet, novelist, editor, theorist, lesbian, and cultural worker. Her lesbian and Jewish identities and commitments informed and shaped her award-winning novels and other writings, and she made significant theoretical contributions to lesbian separatism and fat liberation.