Cynthia Bernard is an Ashkenazi Jewish woman in her early seventies, a long-time classroom teacher and an emerging writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. She lives with her husband, their pets, and many houseplants on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Passager, Ritualwell, The Jewish Writing Project, Verse-Virtual, Poetry Breakfast, The Seattle Star, and elsewhere. She was selected by Western Rivers Conservancy to serve as the Poet-Protector of Deer Creek Falls in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.
Lindy is an active member of the Melbourne Jewish community, is currently on the Board of the Jewish Museum of Australia, a founding member of the K2A program bringing Israelis to Melbourne since 7 October and deeply committed to helping Israel in all ways she can. Lindy enjoys spending time with her family, running, hiking, travelling, and reading - especially Australian and historical fiction novels.
Sophia is a recent college graduate (‘24) from St. Olaf College. She created her own major, entitled Cross Cultural Wellness Studies. She plans to go into the field of Public Health, focusing on how we can create wellness programs that are inclusive of varied understandings of wellness. She is a practicing Shabbat Jew, as she calls it, and a dancer. She loves dancing on Shabbat.
Leslie has a career in counselling and has been writing and teaching creative writing workshops for over 20 years. She has been published twice.
Ozzie Nogg, a rabbi’s daughter — is now eighty-nine years old and has been married to her husband, Don, for seventy years. (Both milestones strike her as mind-blowing.) She writes short fiction, verse and personal essays — sometimes serious, often irreverent — usually with a Jewish slant. Ozzie’s work has appeared in Jewish weekly newspapers across the country, and her book of personal stories, Joseph’s Bones, won First Place in the 2005 Writer’s Digest Press International Self-Published Book Awards.
Angelina is a Jewish narrative and lyrical research writer who is presently obtaining a Masters of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. Her nonfiction piece, Grandpa, was published in Meredith College’s Colton Review, and received an honorable mention at the NC College Media Association 2021 Statewide College Media Awards.
Born in the northwest of England in 1981, S. C. Gordon is a Liverpool-based writer, translator, and editor whose first poetry collection, Peckham Blue, was published in London by Penned in the Margins in 2006; her second collection, Harbouring, came out in November 2015 under Math Paper Press in Singapore. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published in anthologies and journals such as United Verses (2014), Unsavory Elements (Earnshaw, 2013), Middle Kingdom Underground (HAL, 2011), Unshod Quills (2011), Junoesq (2015), and The May Anthologies 10th Anniversary edition (2003). She was part of the Royal Court Theatre’s young writers’ programme from 2007 until 2008, and was a finalist and runner-up in British Vogue’s young writers’ competition in 2004 and 2005. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Liverpool, a BA in English from the University of Oxford, and is the founder of the Jewish press OfTheBook. Her debut novel The Gold Gang is forthcoming from Claret Press in 2025.
Iris Hami is President of Gil Travel Group, the largest travel management firm sending people to Israel. She has over 40 years of experience in the travel industry, and uses that knowledge to craft unique Jewish journeys around the world. Her company has won multiple awards, including one from State of Israel Bonds for Extraordinary Achievements Promoting the State of Israel.
Gil Tours specializes in arranging immersion tours for book clubs, either as part of a wider Jewish heritage tour, or as a dedicated literary tour. If you want to arrange a tour of Portugal, or any other destination, for your book club or reading group, talk to us now. In some cases, we may even be able to arrange an appearance by your favorite author as part of the tour!
Noa Raanan (she/her) is an Israeli-Canadian writer. She worked in the Israeli media and published short stories and nonfiction in Hebrew, English, and German. Her writing was displayed in Granta Hebrew Edition, Frankfurter Rundschau, Emerging Writers Reading Series and more. Currently, she is studying toward an MFA degree at the University of Guelph and writing a novel.