Twenty Girls to Envy Me

Orit Gidali has published three collections of poetry, as well as a children’s book. She teaches at Tel Aviv University and organizes workshops in collaboration with the author Eshkol Nevo.Marcela Sulak, the author of three collections of poetry and three previous book-length translations, directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University, where she is an associate professor of English.

Israeli poet Orit Gidali explores politics, religion and community in Twenty Girls to Envy Me . . . [Her] poems offer timely criticism . . . without being scathing, leaving readers with a prevailing sense of hope. Orit Gidali reveals the many ways in which people connect and matter. (Shelf Awareness) Like the women who came before her, Orit Gidali’s themes are distinct from those of Israel’s male writers. At 42, she is among the top-selling poets in Israel, and the window she opens onto women’s life is rarely glimpsed in Israeli literature. . . . Sulak rises to the translator’s challenge of preserving the poem’s underlying core. By conveying the freshness, spirit and musicality of the originals, she makes Gidali’s poems sing. These are necessary poems, universal in their call for honesty and compassion. . . . We are fortunate indeed to have these poems-both in Hebrew and English-singing in unison. (Moment Magazine)