The Importance of Writing Jewish Identity for Wide Reader Audiences: Five celebrated authors share how and why they weave Jewish identity, community and pride into their mainstream stories as a way to build bridges, stamp out stereotypes and promote peace in a post October 7^th world.

At a time when social media algorithms accelerate the increase of antisemitic tropes, five celebrated Jewish authors–Lynne Golodner, Nora Gold, Lisa Williamson Rosenberg, Sarah Sassoon, and Heidi Shertok–are coming together to discuss why it is important to weave diverse Jewish identities into their stories. These authors will share their visions for how and why they write story and character as a way of creating conversation, building bridges, and sharing a different vision of what it means to be Jewish than what is circulating right now in popular culture. They’ll explain why they find it uplifting, invigorating and validating to write Jewish identity and examine a shared belief that a diversity of Jewish personas on the page is essential for building understanding and empathy in an increasingly polarized world. Through writing Jewish characters and storylines, scenes of positive Jewish engagement, and descriptions of thriving Jewish communities, writers can become stronger in their own identities while offering inspiration, relief and empowerment to readers—and fellow authors.

While it might be easier to abandon Jewish themes for characters and storylines that agents, publishers and audiences might find easier to consume, these authors are doubling down on writing all aspects of Jewish identity—religion and culture along with a diversity of details, circumstances and faces, and including Israel as a strong part of Jewish identity. They’ll discuss how to write Jewish identity as real and not feed stereotypes or tropes; they’ll share how writing Jewish identity can help writers face their own inner conflicts and come out stronger, more empowered, and more embracing of who they are and who they want to be. This panel will present why it can be a winning, and important, strategy to write Jewish, how writing strong Jewish identity can be an act of activism, and even resistance, and why books are ideal conduits for building understanding and conversation around complex, sometimes conflicting, identities. This diverse panel will also explore the imperative to include a variety of Jewish identities on the page, especially from less represented but equally fascinating and rich religious, racial, and sexual origins. This is a quest both professional and personal, and these panelists will explore why books can help us reach beyond the Jewish community with a more expansive definition of what it means to be Jewish, and what we as writers can do to build compassion through writing Jewish identity, while also reclaiming the narrative at a time when it should be Jews who are directing stories about our people, our history and our hopeful future.

Learn more and register for this virtual event at https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/2025-jewish-writers-conference.