Freelance Writing

I've been working as a freelance writer off-and-on since I graduated from college in 1996, so this is one of my most familiar and cherished ways of working in the world.

Samuel Johnson said, "If you want to be a writer, then write! Write every day!" I do my best to live up to his exhortation. My literary career, in the proverbial nutshell, goes like this: I'm a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. In June 1999 I received my MFA in Writing and Literature, with a concentration in poetry. I write a lot of poems, some of which have been collected in a pair of chapbooks; I also maintain a Judaism-focused blog. You can read more about my creative writing here.

From 2000 through 2006 I served as executive director of Inkberry. Inkberry is nonprofit literary arts organization which offers writing workshops, book groups and a reading series to the Berkshire region, plus a bunch of online workshops and message boards for writers worldwide. As of September 2006, though, I'm shifting focus toward my rabbinic studies, my poetry...and the ongoing pleasure of writing an article here and there.

I'm a freelance editor. In recent years I've served as a contributing editor at Storey Books, and as associate editor for online literary journal Pif Magazine . I'm also the former editor of The Women's Times, a monthly publication for women in Western Massachusetts and environs.

And last but not least, I'm a freelance writer. I write essays and articles, which appear in places like Lilith and Bitch. I've written about poets whose work I admire for Woman This Month, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry (Facts on File, 2004). I've even made a foray into the wild world of children's textbooks. I'm interested in almost anything, so if you've got something that needs writing, feel free to pitch me.



If you'd like to hire me to write or edit, you might find my resume and bibliography of published works useful; writing samples are listed below.

Writing samples:

  • Blog is my copilot was published in the Fall 2004 issue of Bitch.

  • Diaspora Grrl was published in the April 2004 issue of Bad Subjects.

  • Wearing Pants in Shul was published in the Fall 2003 issue of Lilith.

  • "Swimming at the Bedouin Beach" was published in the October 2002 issue of GenerationJ.com. Because their archiving software is quirky, I can't link directly to the piece, but it's in their archives.

  • Marrying a Pareve Kid was published in the February 2001 issue of HalfJew.com.

  • I used to review books regularly for Pif Magazine, and for The Hyde Park Review of Books, when they were still producing new issues. Pif provides this handy list of all the reviews I ever wrote for them.

  • New Age Shopping was published in the December 2001 issue of The Women's Times.

  • Here's an Interview With Naomi Shihab Nye, originally published in Pif in August of 1999, which people keep reprinting.



    • Please note that my writing is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Thanks for respecting it!