Sonia Taitz is an American author, essayist and playwright. She has written for The New York Times, as a columnist at the New York Observer, and served as contributing editor for Child, a New York Times publication. Her books include Mothering Heights, the novels In The King's Arms [1] [2] and Down Under, and a literary memoir, The Watchmaker's Daughter.
Taitz was born in New York City to immigrant Holocaust survivors. [3] She grew up in speaking Yiddish in the home. She was sent, at four, to an Orthodox Yeshiva where she learned Hebrew and Torah studies. She later transferred to The Ramaz School, graduating as its Hebrew co-valedictorian. She won the school’s French Award, presented at the Consulate in New York, and addressed Baron Philippe de Rothschild in Paris, in French.
Taitz attended Barnard College, Columbia University, graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English and psychology. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. Taitz was admitted to Yale Law School; she took a leave to go to Oxford University, where she studied the Romantics of the 19th century. These poets, along with Dickens and Eliot, became the basis of her M.Phil. degree in English Literature. Returning to Yale, Taitz obtained her J.D. and passed the New York State Bar.
Taitz acted as a law guardian for foster children, working pro bono under the auspices of Lawyers for Children. She has also served as an advocate in the ER under the “DOVE” program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, supporting the legal rights of victims of rape and/or domestic violence.
Taitz began her career in journalism as theatre critic for The New York Law Journal. She then wrote for 7 Days Magazine. These pieces led to her first book contract, for Mothering Heights, and to freelance work for The New York Times. There, she wrote extensively on the arts (particularly film and theatre), and contributed book reviews and personal essays. She was a contributing editor of Child Magazine, a New York Times publication, and The New York Observer assigned her a column on social/cultural issues. She currently writes for Psychology Today and The Huffington Post, as well as other publications.
Taitz began writing plays while at Oxford University. These were mounted on the stage at the Oxford Playhouse’s Burton-Taylor Rooms. During this time she was awarded the Sir Allan Bullock prize in a short fiction competition.
Other plays by Taitz have been staged in New York at Primary Stages, Women’s Interart Theatre, Circle Repertory, at the Ensemble Studio Theatre where Sonia Taitz served as Artist-in-Residence, as well as at Washington D.C’s National Theatre. Taitz was a three-time finalist at the Humana Festival of New American Plays.
Taitz’s first book was Mothering Heights (1992), a personal and sociological exploration of modern parenthood. [4] [5] The book, which advocated that parents choose their own way to raise their children, [6] was excerpted in the Post for a week, featured on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, NBC, and CNN. It earned praise from People Magazine, Redbook, and Publishers Weekly[ citation needed ].
Taitz’s next book, a novel titled In The King's Arms, received positive reviews by The New York Times Book Review [7] and ForeWord Reviews, [8] and Tait was highly praised by critic Jesse Kornbluth. The Jewish Book Council wrote positively about the novel in its quarterly journal, Jewish Book World and nominated it for the Sami Rohr Prize in Fiction. The Library of Congress funded an audiobook of In The King's Arms, to be taped at the Jewish Braille Institute in New York.
Taitz’s literary memoir, The Watchmaker's Daughter, was published in 2012. [9] [10] The book was listed in Vanity Fair’s “Fanfair/Hot Type” and was also listed as a Reader’s Digest “Must–Read”. It received positive reviews from People Magazine, Kirkus Reviews [11] and was awarded a Book of the Year Medal from ForeWord Reviews. The Library of Congress funded the audio recording of The Watchmaker's Daughter, taped by the author at the Jewish Braille Institute, and completed in early 2014. The book was nominated for the American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal as a book that enhances the understanding of the Jewish-American experience. A radio play, "The Day Starts in the Night," based on an episode in the book, was commissioned and broadcast on NPR.
In 2014 Taitz’s fourth book, Down Under, was published by McWitty. It is a seriocomic novel about first love, forbidden liaisons and second chances.
Sonia Taitz is married and has three children, Emma, Gabriel, and Phoebe.
Just Like That (1994) is a novel by Lily Brett about Holocaust survivors in the United States. Up to a point, it is autobiographical: The author was born in Germany in 1946 and came to Melbourne, Australia with her parents in 1948. She is married to painter David Rankin; they have three children and currently live in New York. Very similar things can be said about the heroine of Brett's book, Esther Zepler.
Sonia Manzano is an American actress, screenwriter, author, singer and songwriter. She is best known for playing Maria on Sesame Street from 1971 to 2015. She received a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award in 2016.
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Daniela Gioseffi is a poet, novelist and performer who won the American Book Award in 1990 for Women on War; International Writings from Antiquity to the Present. She has published 16 books of poetry and prose and won a PEN American Center's Short Fiction prize (1995), and The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry (2007).
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Dara Horn is a Jewish American novelist, essayist, and professor of literature. She has written five novels and in 2021, released a nonfiction essay collection titled People Love Dead Jews, which was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002, the National Jewish Book Award in 2003 and 2006, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize in 2007.
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Ransom is a novel by Danielle Steel, published by Random House in February 2004.
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Sonia Pilcer is an American author, playwright, and poet, best known for her semi-autobiographical novels Teen Angel and The Holocaust Kid. She is responsible for coining the term "2G" to refer to Second Generation Holocaust survivors in a 1990 essay of the same name for 7 Days magazine.
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Little Fires Everywhere is the second novel by the American author Celeste Ng. It was published in 2017 by Penguin Press. The novel takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Ng grew up. The novel focuses on two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights who are brought together through their children. Ng described writing about her hometown as "a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them, you love them dearly, and yet, you also know all of their quirks and their foibles."
Kingfisher is a fantasy novel by Patricia A. McKillip. It was first published in hardcover and ebook by Ace Books in February 2016. The first British edition was published in ebook by Gateway/Orion in June 2017.
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