Ire­na Klep­fisz taught Jew­ish Wom­en’s Stud­ies at Barnard Col­lege for 22 years. She is the author of four books of poet­ry includ­ing Peri­ods of Stress, Keep­er of Accounts, Dif­fer­ent Enclo­sures, A Few Words in the Moth­er Tongue, and an essay col­lec­tion Dreams of an Insom­ni­ac. She is the co-edi­tor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jew­ish’s Wom­en’s Anthol­o­gy. She is one of the fore­most advo­cates of the Yid­dish lan­guage and its renais­sance in the Unit­ed States. Her work has appeared in In Geveb, Sin­is­ter Wis­dom, Jew­ish Cur­rents, Lan­guages of Mod­ern Jew­ish Cul­tures, The Man­hat­tan Review, The Geor­gia Review and more.