Wendy Drexler’s first book-length collection, Western Motel, was published in 2012 by Turning Point. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Blood Orange Review, Cider Press Review (2011 Pushcart Prize nominee), Mid-American Review (2012 Pushcart Prize nominee), Nimrod (semi-finalist, 2006 Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize), Off the Coast, Poetry East, RHINO, Salamander, and other journals, and featured on Verse Daily and in the anthologies Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and Burning Bright. Her chapbook, Drive-Ins, Gas Stations, the Bright Motels (Pudding House, 2007), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a poetry editor for Sanctuary magazine. Her website is wendydrexlerpoetry.com.

 

Velda Shaby is a seasoned software architect with years of experience developing websites as well as creating and evaluating strategies to provide digital solutions to the business community. Her previous experience includes 30+ years working with cutting-edge technology at Digital and Fidelity Investments. She has also devoted her energies to several Jewish communities in the Boston area and draws on these various experiences along with her passion for people and Jewish causes to focus on strategies for JWA's online presence. Velda has a BS in physics and an MS in math and teaches at Northeastern University’s Digital Media Department.

Joanna Ware is the Lead Organizer and Training Coordinator at Keshet, working to transform the Jewish community into a place of full inclusion and welcome for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Jews. She is a queer femme, making home and community in Boston, originally from Southern California. You can find her [infrequent] writing and tweeting at www.queeringjew.com and @QueeringJew.

Benjamin Maron, Director of Content and Educational Resources at InterfaithFamily, is known online as @thewanderingjew. A Canadian nomad of North America currently residing in Brookline, MA, he's an educator, editor, writer, community organizer, advocate, chef, Scrabble player, and baby whisperer.

Michelle Provorny Cash received her MFA from the University of Maryland. She is a poet and a prose writer and currently serves as JWA’s Director of Communications.

Jennifer is a Jewish storyteller, educator, and coach based in Baltimore, Maryland. Jennifer’s original story, “Rina and the Exodus” was published in the anthology, Mitzvah Stories: Seeds for Inspiration, a National Jewish Book Award finalist. The Macks Center for Jewish Education commissioned the six original stories included on Jennifer’s CD, ‘The Growing Season’. Jennifer facilitates the Storytelling Teacher Training project at Krieger Schechter Day School, Goldsmith Early Childhood Learning Center, and Chizuk Amuno Congregation. For nine years Jennifer has co-taught the Oral History of the Holocaust course at Goucher College, individually coaching each of her students.

Annie Jacobs writes in an effort to translate her involvement with the world. She recently called a kibbutz in the Negev Desert home while working for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Annie was also recently a staff-artist at the Vermont Studio Center where she coordinated the Writing Program. She was a 2012 poetry fellow at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She currently the Dairy Apprentice at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Her poems, essays, interviews, and drawings have been published in Whole Terrain, the Arava Review, and Gender Across Borders.

Steven Myers-Yawnick is currently working on a masters degree in English Literature. His passions include global and transnational feminism, ecocriticism, and postcolonial theory. He lives in Jamaica Plain.

Mimi Garcia is an organizer, mom, progressive operative and Jewtina (Latina-Jew) in Austin, Texas. She is an aluma of Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership program at Brandies University and holds an MA in Jewish Leadership and an MPP in Social Policy.

Jordyn Rozensky is the Director of Social Media at the Jewish Women's Archive. Jordyn completed her undergraduate studies at Smith College. Smith’s history of cultivating strong women helped to focus her feminism, although she credits her passions for equality and social justice to her mother, father, and sister. As a storyteller she wields her camera to capture the world in Boston and beyond, with her documentary, wedding and event work featured at www.jordynrozensky.com and on her blog.