Erika Dreifus is the author of Birthright: Poems and Quiet Americans: Stories, which was named an American Library Association/Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. A fellow in the Sami Rohr Jewish Literary Institute, Erika lives in New York.

Books by Erika Dreifus:

Erika Dreifus's Website.

Erika Dreifus on Twitter.

About Birthright:

"Erika Dreifus's poems in Birthright are about the skull and the heart, the bone, and the muscle. They are poems about holiness and everydayness and, in part, about the convergence of these two movements as a way to embrace and discover mercy, love, and honesty. What they illustrate is the beauty that happens in that space, when both elements are embraced and when forces collide: 'I've always remembered the Sabbath day; I just haven't kept it holy.' Birthright is a book that explores connectedness and connective tissue. These are poems that embrace faith, family, and the forest of good intention in all of its contradictory forces. It's about the expensive nature of coloring one's hair and the expansive nature, which explodes in the beaming colors of the Diaspora. Every time I come back to Birthright I am born again out of the little pieces in me that have died. This is the magic of Erika Dreifus's poems. They are the flame in the darkness of Deuteronomy; they are the spellbound silence of history that helps to bind you with the people right next to you and to the 'ancestral spirits that mingle above."
—Matthew Lippman

"Full of humor and history, the personal and the painful, Erika Dreifus's Birthright is a thoughtful reflection on life and loss, on inheritance and the individual, collective, and intergenerational nature of Jewish experience. The book's midrashic reflections challenge readers to reconsider ancient texts and their modern resonances. Some of its more political poems, while offering a perspective that is not always easy to hear, add a critical voice to the dissonant chorus that composes today's commentary on Israel-Palestine. At its most moving moments, Birthright relays intimate and familial experiences with an earnest and generous vulnerability. With its honest, accessible language and straightforward storytelling, Erika Dreifus's first full-length collection is a welcome addition to the modern American poetry canon—narrative, Jewish, feminist, or otherwise."
—Sivan Butler-Rotholz

"These clear, unvarnished poems take us deeply into a life engaged with history, family, tradition, politics, and contemporary culture."
—Richard Chess