Yael Arami is an activist whose work addresses the complex intersection of religious, social, political, and economic issues for Mizrahi women, and her articles on these topics have been featured in Israeli periodicals including Noga and Kivun Mizrah. She is co-founder of an egalitarian Mizrahi prayer group in Jerusalem, and she is a former board member of Ahoti (My Sister) -- an organization focusing on the rights and economic advancement of working class Mizrahi women in Israel. Yael is in her third year of studies at The Eastern Music Center, where she learns religious Mizrahi music and classical Eastern music. She also received formal training in rabbinic studies, and her dream is to establish a progressive Mizrahi synagogue in Israel.

Gina Bublil Waldman is co-founder of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), through which she lectures widely about the history of Mizrahim and the Arab-Israel conflict. Prior to her work with JIMENA, Waldman worked extensively with Muslim refugees from Bosnia, for which she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award. In addition, she spent well over a decade as a leading activist in the Soviet Jewry movement.

Henriette Dahan Kalev is the head of the Gender Studies Program in the University of Ben Gurion in The Negev, and she has a Ph.D. in Political Science. She has written many articles on Mizrahi feminism and general political culture in Israel. Together with other Mizrahi friends, she founded the Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrahit (The Democratic Mizrahi Movement) and Ahoti (My Sister) -- an organization focusing on the rights and economic advancement of working class Mizrahi women in Israel. Henriette is an activist on numerous other human rights issues, as well.

Farideh Dayanim Goldin is the author of Wedding Song (Brandeis University Press, 2003), under the name Farideh Goldin, and her book is the first autobiography written in English by an Iranian Jew. She has published articles in anthologies and magazines including To Mend the World: Women Reflect on 9/11, Turnings, Bridges, and Nashim. Farideh studied Math and English Literature at Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. She transferred to Old Dominion University in Virginia, where she received her BA in English Literature, MA in Humanities, graduate certificate in Women's Studies, and MFA in Creative Writing.

Mira Eliezer is a third year student at Michlala Academait Law School in Ramat Gan. She is co-founder of Tiduá, an alternative community college which she established with Mizrahi peers, and for ten years, she served as Assistant Director of HILA (Association for Education in the Poor Neighborhoods and Development Towns), offering counseling and support to parents challenging educational institutions. Mira also served as the Manager of Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrahit (The Democratic Mizrahi Movement), the Office Manager of the Tel Aviv branch of The Feminist Movement in Israel, and a volunteer for the Tel Aviv Rape Crisis Center. She currently works as Manager of the Foreign Affairs department at a local corporation.

Julie Iny is the Associate Director of Kids First, a multi-racial organization of youth and adults working to transform the systems that serve youth in Oakland, California -- including schools, city and county government -- through youth organizing, advocacy, and coalition building. Julie completed her undergraduate studies in Ethnicity and Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. During this time, she co-founded A Jewish Voice for Peace -- a grassroots organization in the San Francisco Bay Area, promoting co-existence and a just peace for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Julie credits the generosity and warmth of her Iraqi-Indian extended family, as well as the legacy of American Jewish involvement with labor, civil rights, and feminist struggles, as sources of inspiration for her activism.

Ruth Knafo Setton is the author of the The Road to Fez (Counterpoint Press, 2001). The recipient of literary fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and PEN, among others, her fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best Contemporary Jewish Writing, The North American Review, Tikkun, Lilith, Another Chicago Magazine, The Jewish Quarterly, and Sephardic-American Voices. Ruth has taught Creative Writing in the MFA program at Georgia College & State University, and is now Writer-in-Residence for the Berman Center for Jewish Studies at Lehigh University. She is the Fiction Editor of Arts & Letters: A Journal of Contemporary Culture, and she is working on a new novel and collection of poems.

Lital Levy is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where she works on modern Hebrew and Arabic literature and film, and she has furthered her graduate studies in Jerusalem and Cairo. A specialist in Mizrahi, Arab-Jewish and Israeli/Palestinian topics, Lital is preparing her dissertation on the late 19th-early 20th century writing of Egyptian and Iraqi Jews. Her writing has appeared in publications including Bridges, The Arab Studies Journal, Critical Sense, The Christian Science Monitor, and Jewish Film: A Resource Guide.

Tikva Levy is the Director of HILA (Association for Education in the Poor Neighborhoods and Development Towns), and her articles and poems have appeared in News From Within and Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (San Francisco City Lights Books, 1996). She lives in Israel with her young daughter, Yasmin.

Bahareh Mobasseri Rinsler is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles, where she works with adults, children, and families. She received her B.A. in Women's Studies from UCLA, where she was co-founder of the first Rosh Hodesh Jewish women’s ritual group, and she continued her graduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University. She lives with her husband Gregg, and their dog, Papaya.

Mojgan Moghadam-Rahbar is a freelance writer and translator of Iranian and American media, producer and host of Radio Voice of Iran, and the former editor-in-chief of Peyman magazine for young Iranian Jews in Los Angeles. She is the mother of two children and expecting a new baby.

Homa Sarshar is the founder of the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, as well as the author of two and editor of twelve books. Her latest single-author book, Shaban Jafari, was the number one best seller in several countries, including Iran, in 2003. From 1968-1978, Homa was as a correspondent reporter, special events reporter, and columnist for Zan-e ruz weekly magazine and Keyhan daily newspaper in Iran, where she also worked as the television producer, director, and talk-show host of National Iranian Radio & Television. Homa has received numerous awards for her work, including the Medal for Special Achievement in Women's Rights, given by the Iranian Women's Organization of Tehran, Iran. She currently works with Jaam-E-Jam Television in the Los Angeles area, and Yaran Radio, broadcast globally via satellite.

Ella Shohat is a professor of Cultural Studies at the departments of Art & Public Policy, Middle Eastern Studies, and Comparative Literature at New York University. She has lectured and published extensively on the intersection of post/colonialism, multiculturalism, and gender, both nationally and internationally. Her award-winning work includes the books Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (University of Texas Press, 1989) and Unthinking Eurocentrism (co-authored with R. Stam, Routledge, 1994). Ella has curated a number of cultural events and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Social Text, Critique, Jouvert and Public Culture. Her writings have been translated into languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew, German, and Turkish.

Caroline (pronounced Carolene) Smadja is an author currently living in France and writing a short story collection. Her writing has been published in the United States, Canada, South Africa, and France, including "Motherland," (Kinesis, April 2000), "After Dark" (Jewish Affairs, Fall 2001), "Healing” (Upstairs at Duroc), and "In Absentia" (California Quarterly). When Caroline is not writing, she teaches French and English to expatriates and works as an inter-cultural trainer. In addition, she is an active member of the Société d'Histoire des Juifs de Tunisie (Organization on the History of Jews from Tunisia).

Rachel Wahba has a private psychotherapy practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her partner of twenty five years, Judy Dlugacz. Rachel is currently working on her memoirs, Surviving Babylon. Her published writing includes: "Coming Out of the Frame: Lesbian Feminism and Self Psychology," in Lesbians in Psychoanalysis (The Free Press, 1995) and "Hiding is Unhealthy for the Soul," in Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian, Gay, and Jewish (Beacon Press, l989).

Kyla Wazana Tompkins is doctoral candidate in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. She is writing her dissertation on food and eating in nineteenth-century literature and in U.S. cultural history, and she has published in Tikkun, San Francisco Chronicle, and Globe and Mail.