Yona Zeldis McDonough
What is the value of a work of art when weighed against the value of a human life?
Behind Mona Lisa’s Smile
Author: Yona Zeldis McDonough
A Novel Takes on the Thorny World of Surrogacy
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Nuances and potential landmines arise with such a radically new way to bring children into the world.
A Chicago Heiress Who Helped Jews Escape the Nazis
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Inspired by an heiress living in Paris when Hitler invaded, who might have gone home like most Americans did, but instead stayed and risked her life to help strangers.
Louise Fein on The Hidden Child: Eugenics, Epilepsy, and Women’s Roles
Yona Zeldis McDonough
The new novel, “The Hidden Child”, set in Britain in the years between the two world wars, exposes—and challenges— pernicious ideas about epilepsy and sheds a more benevolent light on the disorder.
Violence, Loss and Healing—Emily Barth Isler’s “Aftermath”
Yona Zeldis McDonough
I love showing a roadmap to forgiveness in the book. In a story that shares more than enough examples of how life can be horribly unfair and sad, I want kids to see examples of how things can go well or be done helpfully. How things can go right.
‘The Dressmakers of Auschwitz’—Jewish Women’s Resistance and Heroism
Yona Zeldis McDonough
In the early 1940s, twenty-five young female inmates of Auschwitz—mostly Jewish—were chosen to design, cut and sew beautiful clothes in a dedicated salon for elite Nazi women. Their skills kept them alive.
Young, Jewish and Bisexual in Fiction
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Author Jodi Rosenfeld chats with Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about her debut novel, Closer to Fine.
A Novel Goes from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire to the Suffragists’ Fight for the Vote
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Religious freedom, women’s rights and gender equality can’t happen in a vacuum—they need each other to progress.
Jane Lazarre on How This Age of Crisis Affects Our Inner Worlds
Yona Zeldis McDonough
The so called outside world has invaded deeply and permanently the inside world, even for some of the most privileged.
“The Last Checkmate”: Survival (and Chess) in Auschwitz
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Debut author Gabriella Saab talks about the power that chess exerts in her character’s life—and her own.