This pan­el fea­tures Jew­ish women who have con­tributed great­ly to the Jew­ish lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty. They will dis­cuss what it’s meant to be a female Jew­ish writer over the past sev­er­al decades — how have things changed and how have things remained the same? They will also dis­cuss their most recent works, what they tack­le in their own writ­ing, and what issues they think will emerge in the (near) future. What’s next? Mod­er­at­ed by Bari Weiss.

Elisa Albert is the author of After Birth (Houghton Mif­flin Har­court, 2015), The Book of Dahlia (2008), How This Night is Dif­fer­ent (2006), and the edi­tor of the anthol­o­gy Freud’s Blind Spot (2010). Her fic­tion and non­fic­tion have appeared in Tin House, Post Road, Gulf Coast, Com­men­tary, Salon, Tablet, Los Ange­les Review of Books, The Believ­er, The Rum­pus, Time Mag­a­zine, on NPR, and in many anthologies.

Ani­ta Dia­mant is the best­selling author of the nov­els The Red Tent, Good Har­bor, The Last Days of Dog­town, Day After Night, and Boston Girl(Scrib­n­er) and the col­lec­tion of essays, Pitch­ing My Tent. An award-win­ning jour­nal­ist whose work has appeared in The Boston Globe Mag­a­zineand Par­ent­ing, she is the author of six non­fic­tion guides to con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish life. She lives in Massachusetts.

Ruth Andrew Ellen­son is a jour­nal­ist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Ange­les Times, Peo­ple, Huff­in­g­ton Post, The For­ward and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. She received the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for edit­ing the best sell­ing anthol­o­gy The Mod­ern Jew­ish Girl’s Guide to Guilt. Ellen­son recent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on edi­to­r­i­al projects, includ­ing a forth­com­ing book, with late phil­an­thropist Edgar M. Bronf­man, and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a book with phil­an­thropist Michael Stein­hardt. She received her MFA from Colum­bia University.

Host­ed at the Jew­ish Muse­um in New York City (1109 5th Avenue), Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Con­ver­sa­tion brings togeth­er some of the finest writ­ers of the day for con­ver­sa­tions around con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish life and iden­ti­ty. This event is FREE with pay-what-you-want admis­sion and includes wine and refresh­ments, a book sale and sign­ing, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the Jew­ish Muse­um gal­leries on the day of the pro­gram; how­ev­er, space is lim­it­ed and guests must reg­is­ter in advance.