Irena Klepfisz

Irena Klepfisz, born on April 17, 1941, in the Warsaw Ghetto, is a Jewish author and academic. After immigrating to the United States, Klepfisz received a BA in English from the City College of New York and went on to receive a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. Klepfisz is the author of several books of poetry, including Between Worlds/Pomiędzy światam (słowo/obraz terytoria, 2024); Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971–2021 (Wesleyan University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and a finalist for a 2023 National Jewish Book Award; and A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (Eighth Mountain Press, 1990), nominated for a Lambda Award in Poetry. Along with Clare Kinberg and Grace Paley, she founded The Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Active in lesbian and feminist movements, Klepfisz cofounded Conditions: a feminist magazine of writing by women with a particular emphasis on writing by lesbians which ran from 1976 to 1990. Inspired by the bilingual writing of Gloria Anzaldúa, she began experimenting with mixed-language Yiddish and English poetry. From 1993 to 2018, Klepfisz taught Jewish women’s studies at Barnard College and was a guest scholar at other institutions. She taught English and women's studies for ten years at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. An advocate of the Yiddish language, she also taught at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Source

about my father

—he became a teetotaler out of his socialist convictions; during

the war he began to drink again

—he was casual; he kept his tie in his pocket till the last minute

before oral exams

—he left me on the street to be picked up by the nuns from the

orphanage; he watched me from a distant doorway

—once he refused to hit me; he told my mother his hand was

too large

—he wrote to his aunt that he hoped the baby would be a boy

—when he was a student, jews were not permitted to sit in the

front rows of lecture halls; he made it a point to

stand through the lectures; ultimately, jews were

allowed to sit

—he was a discus thrower

—according to some, he got along with everyone: jews, goyim,

children

—he was caught a couple of times by the germans; they thought

he was a polish smuggler

—once he was put on a train for treblinka; he jumped, was shot at

and wounded, but got back to warsaw alive

—he believed in resistance

Published:

1975

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Education & Learning

Faith & Hope

Family

Memory & The Past

Politics

Strength & Resilience

Violence & War