STEPHANIE GREEN is a writer whose privileged life was interrupted by stage II breast cancer at 32. She shopped, Botoxed, pill-popped and partied her way through a bilateral mastectomy, reconstruction and four months of chemo. “Benzos and Breast Cancer” will also appear in her upcoming memoir Cancer Is the New Black.
BEN GREENMAN is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of several books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both and Please Step Back. He lives in Brooklyn.
LYNN HARRIS is author of the comic novel Death by Chick Lit and its prequel, Miss Media. She is cocreator of the venerable website BreakupGirl.net. An award-winning journalist, she writes for Glamour, Salon.com, The New York Times, and many others. She writes the Rabbi’s Wife column for Nextbook.org, about her own experience. www.lynnharris.net
ELLIOTT KALAN is a segment producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, weekly columnist for the newspaper Metro and occasional stand-up comedian. In previous lives he hosted the talk show The Midnight Kalan, cohosted the Internet radio show Fist City and formed half of the sketch comedy group the Hypocrites.
MARK KATZ is an ex–political operative, recovering copywriter and failed sitcom writer, who went on to become the founder of the Soundbite Institute, a creative think tank for strategic communications. His essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times and Time. He is the author of Clinton & Me: A Real Life Political Comedy (Miramax Books), an account of eight years as the in-house humor speechwriter of the Clinton White House.
BYRON KERMAN is a journalist and comedy writer living in St. Louis. They laughed at him at the academy, but someday he will show them all.
JONATHAN BARUCH KESSELMAN (yes, he is Jewish), the godfather of the Jewxploitation film, was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. The Hebrew Hammer, his first feature film, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Festival, and was released by Strand Releasing in conjunction with Comedy Central and Paramount Home Video. Jon wrote and will direct The Orbit of Bob for Nickelodeon, and the live-action feature film Odd Todd, based on the web cartoons of the same name, for Paramount. The Hebrew Hammer 2: Hammer vs. Hitler as well as the stage musical version are also in production. Jon recently wrote (with Da Ali G Show’s writer/producer, Jamie Glassman) the film Pure Air and directed an episode of David Wain’s Wainy Days. He writes a humor column for Suicide Girls and teaches comedy writing for the screen at Yale University.
ANNETTE EZEKIEL KOGAN is the founder, singer and accordionist of the New York klezmer-rock band Golem. She’s been writing songs and short stories all along her wild ride through the contemporary Yiddish world. She lives in New York City.
LISA KRON is known for her plays Well, which premiered on Broadway in 2006 and garnered her a Tony nomination following an acclaimed run at the Public Theater, and the Obie Award–winning 2.5 Minute Ride. Lisa is also a proud founding member of the Obie and Bessie Award–winning theater company the Five Lesbian Brothers.
TODD LEVIN is a writer and comedian living in Brooklyn. His words can be read in Salon, Glamour, Esquire, McSweeney’s and RADAR. His face can be seen on Comedy Central and stand-up comedy stages all over NYC. And his voice can be heard on Public Radio International’s Fair Game. And also: www.tremble.com.
ADAM LOWITT is a senior producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has been a contributing writer for Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. He currently hosts and produces IT IS IT, a bimonthly comedy show on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
JOSHUA NEUMAN is the Publisher of Heeb magazine. A graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School, he has taught undergraduate courses in the Philosophy of Religion at New York University, written for Slate, eMusic and ESPN and appeared on VH1, Food Network, Court TV and National Public Radio. His first book, The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2005.
SIMON RICH is the author of two humor collections, Ant Farm and Free-Range Chickens. He currently writes for Saturday Night Live.
DAVID J. ROSEN lives in NYC, where he attempts to write books and TV shows between walking his dog and eating cheese. He is the author of the novel I Just Want My Pants Back and the nonfiction book What’s That Job and How the Hell Do I Get It?
TODD ROSENBERG is a freelance animator who runs the website www.oddtodd.com, featuring cartoons about an unemployed guy who sits around in his apartment doing nothing. Todd’s animated segments have been featured on ABC News, America’s Test Kitchen, the National Geographic channel, Comedy Central and the IFC Media Project. He is the author of The Odd Todd Handbook: Hard Times, Soft Couch. He lives in Brooklyn.
NAJLA SAID is an award-winning actress, comedian and writer. She has appeared Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally, as well as in film and television. She is a founding member of Nibras Theater Collective, and is currently working on her one-woman show, Palestine. Najla is a graduate of Prince-ton University.
ALLEN SALKIN cast industrial films in Hong Kong, wholesaled rubber duckies in Las Vegas, picked oranges in Crete, peddled oil paintings door-to-door in Western Australia and spent much of his 20s standing in the corner at parties scrawling notes in his journal. He is now a reporter at The New York Times, where he has written about robot dogs, doom tourism and unicorns. He also wrote the book Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us.
WENDY SHANKER has written for Glamour, Self, Shape, Us Weekly (Fashion Police), Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Seventeen, Bust and Bitch, as well as MTV. She published the humorous, hopeful memoir about women and body image, The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life (Bloomsbury USA), for which she appeared on The View, Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, and on a national tour sponsored by Macy’s. The Fat Girl’s Guide has been published in Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese and Polish (but not French—because French women don’t get fat). Her latest book, Does This Book Make Me Look Fat?: 14 Writers Weigh In, was published by Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin in 2008. www.wendyshanker.com
ABBY SHER has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, SELF, Heeb, Jane, Redbook and Lost. Her first young-adult novel, Kissing Snowflakes, was published by Scholastic in the fall of 2007. Abby also has pieces in Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion and the upcoming Behind the Bedroom Door, published by Bantam and due out in January 2009. Before returning to her native New York, Abby wrote and performed for The Second City in Chicago, where she was a company member for five years. Abby currently performs improvisation weekly at the Magnet Theater in New York, and is working on her memoir, which she recently sold to Scribner.
MICHAEL SHOWALTER wrote and directed the romantic comedy The Baxter (IFC Films). He is also one-third of the comedy trio Stella. He cowrote, coproduced and starred in the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer and was a founding member of the MTV sketch troupe the State. Currently, Michael is performing stand-up and working on a new TV project. His favorite food is gazpacho.
LAURA SILVERMAN first caught the attention of television viewers with her memorable vocal performance as the bitingly droll receptionist also named Laura on the popular animated sitcom Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist. She followed that with turns in the movies Half Baked and State and Main as well as numerous television shows including King of Queens, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Home Movies, and was a series regular on the cult HBO comedy series The Comeback. In 2005, Laura joined her sister briefly onscreen in the stand-up feature Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. More animation work was soon to follow as Silverman voiced characters in Freak Show and Metalocalypse, and in 2007 she reunited with her sister on the critically acclaimed Comedy Central series The Sarah Silverman Program. In 2008, Silverman guest-starred opposite Hugh Laurie on an episode of Fox’s hit series House. She was recently named one of the “Top 100 People of 2008” by USA Today.
HAL SIROWITZ is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. His first book, Mother Said, was translated into nine languages, including Hebrew. He shared the Na
tional Jewish Foundation Rosenberg Award for Contemporary Music with composer Alla Borzova, who set some of his poems to music.
RAVEN SNOOK, a writer, performer, diva and proud Jewish mama, has penned articles for Time Out, The Village Voice, the New York Post, TV Guide, New York magazine’s website and Heeb, told stories at the Moth and Heeb Storytelling, and hosted myriad burlesque shows, including the all-Jewish Kosher ChiXXX. For more info, visit www.ravensnook.com.
JOEL STEIN grew up in Edison, New Jersey, went to Stanford and then worked for Martha Stewart for a year. He was a sports editor at Time Out New York, then lucked into a job as a staff writer for Time magazine, where over seven and a half years he wrote a dozen cover stories on subjects such as Michael Jordan, Las Vegas, the Internet bubble and—it being Time and he being a warm body in the office—low-carb diets. He has appeared on any TV show that asks him: VH1’s I Love the Decade You Tell Me I Love, HBO’s Phoning It In, Comedy Central’s Reel Comedy and E! Entertainment’s 101 Hottest Hot Hotties’ Hotness. After teaching a class in humor writing at Princeton, he moved to L.A. at the beginning of 2005 to write a column for the Los Angeles Times. He still contributes to Time and whatever magazines allow him to.
ALIX STRAUSS is a media-savvy social satirist and lifestyle trend writer. She has appeared on national morning and talk shows including those on ABC, CBS, CNN and VH1. She has written for The New York Times, the New York Post, Time, Departures, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Self and Esquire. Her novel The Joy of Funerals (St. Martin’s Press) was optioned by Stockard Channing, who is attached to direct. Recently she edited the anthology Have I Got a Guy For You. www.alixstrauss.com
DARIN STRAUSS is the international bestselling author of the New York Times Notable Books Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy. Also a screenwriter, he is adapting Chang and Eng with Gary Oldman. The recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction writing, he is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU’s graduate school. His latest book, More Than It Hurts You, was published in June 2008.
JOSH SWILLER has been deaf since the age of 4, and now hears through a cochlear implant. His first book, The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa, was published in 2007 to rave reviews, and Josh is hard at work thinking about being hard at work on his next one.
NOAH TARNOW is quizmaster, producer and writer of the Big Quiz Thing, NYC’s live trivia spectacular. He’s hosted quiz events throughout the city and around the country, and was a contestant on both the VH1 game show Name That Video (champion—won a car) and Jeopardy! (second place—curse you, Trebek!). Elsewhere and elsewhen, he’s the chief copy editor for Time Out New York, a writer whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone and Jane, a stand-up comedian and a karaoke singer of stunning ferocity.
ERIC D. WIENGRAD, a native Philadelphian, resides in West Hollywood, California, with his wife. He’s an established reality television producer and director, published writer and photographer. His Transformers sleeping bag, mentioned in the story, can be viewed on display at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. Just kidding… they said no.
RENA ZAGER is a comedian who has appeared on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and on NBC’s Late Friday. She is a featured performer for the variety show Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad, which, most recently, has been wowing them at the Zipper Theater. She’s also a writer for the VH-1 show Best Week Ever.
* Liza’s name has been changed to protect the Pilates method.
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