Joy Ladin

Joy Ladin was born in 1961 and received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 1982. Ladin went on to earn an MFA in creative writing/poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1995 and a PhD in English from Princeton University in 2000.

Often devotional and at times based in history and utilizing sacred Jewish texts, Ladin’s early poetry “offers a personal view of the big truths,” writes Stanley Moss.

In 2007, Ladin became the first openly transgender employee of Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish institution. Ladin has published numerous poetry collections, including Family (Persea, 2024); Shekhinah Speaks (selva oscura 2022); The Book of Anna (EOAGH Books, 2021), winner of the National Jewish Book Award; The Future Is Trying to Tell Us Something (Sheep Meadow Press, 2017); Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press, 2017); Impersonation (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015); Transmigration (Sheep Meadow Press, 2009); The Book of Anna (Sheep Meadow Press, 2007); and Alternatives to History (Sheep Meadow Press, 2003).

Ladin is also the author of a memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). Ladin says,

When I started writing as myself, I started writing about feelings, tastes, colors, relationships, and I found myself writing with much more depth, confidence, authority and power, because I wasn’t hiding anymore. I had always lived in my writing, but now I was living in plain sight, living in truth, writing toward wholeness as a human being instead of trying to hide behind my words.

Ladin is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Hadassah Brandeis Research Fellowship, two Forward Fives Awards, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, and a Fulbright Scholarship.

Ladin teaches at the Stern College of Yeshiva University, where she holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English.