Yetzirah Reading at Asheville JCC

Readers and Bios

Jehanne Dubrow

Yerra Sugarman

Maya Bernstein

Jessica Jacobs

Rick Chess

Daniel Kraft

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently, Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021), and three books of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019), Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022), and Exhibitions: Essays on Art & Atrocity (University of New Mexico Press, 2023). Her previous poetry collections are Simple Machines, American Samizdat, Dots & Dashes, The Arranged Marriage, Red Army Red, Stateside, From the Fever-World, and The Hardship Post. She has co-edited two anthologies, The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems about Perfume and Still Life with Poem: Contemporary Natures Mortes in Verse. Her tenth book of poems, Civilians, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in Spring 2025.

Jehanne’s poems have appeared in POETRY, Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, American Life in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, The Academy of American Poets, as well as on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in numerous other venues. Recent essays have appeared in The New England Review, Colorado Review, The Common, The Seneca Review, Image, Guernica, and West Branch. She is the founding editor of the national literary journal, Cherry Tree.

Maya Bernstein’s writing has appeared in the Cider Press Review, the Eunoia Review, Kveller, Lilith Magazine, Poetica Magazine, Tablet Magazine, and elsewhere. She is on faculty at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership, the Masa Leadership Center, and Yeshivat Maharat, and is pursuing an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her first collection is There Is No Place Without You (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022).

Yerra Sugarman is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, February 2022); The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow Press, 2008), poems from which received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow Press, 2002), which won PEN American Center’s PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. Her chapbook From Her Lips Like Steam was published by the Aureole Press at the University of Toledo in December 2019. 

Other honors she has earned include a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant for Creative Writers, the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, a Chicago Literary Award, and a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Award.

Her poems, articles, and translations have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, The Nation, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, and elsewhere.

She has taught creative writing and literature at the University of Toledo, the University of Houston, Rutgers University, the City College of New York, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and at New York University. She earned an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University, and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. A daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was born in Toronto, and lives in New York City. She is the Secretary of Yetzirah’s Board of Directors.

Daniel Kraft is a writer, poet, translator, and essayist. He holds a master’s degree in Jewish studies from Harvard Divinity School, where he was a resident at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. His poems and essays appear in a number of publications including Image, Jewish Currents, EcoTheo Review, and Peripheries; his translations of Yiddish, along with brief personal and critical essays, can be found in his newsletter, Di Freyd Fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, at danielkraft.substack.com. In addition to writing and translating, Daniel has worked as a full-time Director of Education at synagogues across the American South, and as an educator at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland.

Jessica Jacobs is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University and the Goldie Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, Eric Hoffer, and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, was an Over the Rainbow selection by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Julie Suk Awards. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. She co-authored Write It!, a collection of writing prompts from Spruce Books, an imprint of Penguin/RandomHouse.

Jessica holds an M.F.A. from Purdue University, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Sycamore Review, and a B.A. from Smith College. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including Orion, Ploughshares, Image, and New England Review. She leads workshops around the country, and has taught for programs including the Fine Arts Work Center, UNC-Wilmington’s MFA program, and Writing Workshops in Greece, and serves on the North Carolina Writers’ Network Board of Trustees.

She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.

Richard Chess is the author of four books of poetry, Love Nailed to the Doorpost (University of Tampa Press 2017), Tekiah (University of Georgia Press 1996; republished by University of Tampa Press 2000); Chair in the Desert (University of Tampa Press 2000); and Third Temple (University of Tampa Press 2006). His poems have been anthologized in Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Bearing Witness: Twenty Years of Image Journal, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in Best American Spiritual Writing 2005. His essays have been included in Stars Shall Bend Their Voices: Poets’ Favorite Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 27 Views of Asheville, Far from the Center of Ambition, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to Close Reading, the blog hosted by Slant Books. He was a member of the core arts faculty at the Brandeis Bardin Institute for three years, after which he was on the faculty of the Jewish Arts Institute at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. He is Professor Emeritus at UNC Asheville. He directed UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies for 30 years. He also played a leading role in UNC Asheville’s contemplative inquiry initiative. He is the Treasurer of Yetzirah.

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