I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where I attended Jewish day schools. I did my undergraduate work in English literature at Harvard, where I wrote humor pieces for the Harvard Lampoon, published fiction in the Harvard Advocate, and won a few prizes.

Between college and graduate school I spent a year at Columbia University’s MFA program in creative writing, before dropping out for financial reasons. I also worked as an editor of gift books, published a cookbook, and, from 2003 to early 2004, served as the editor of JBooks.com, an online Jewish book review magazine. Between 2004 and the summer of 2009, I worked on a PhD in English literature at the University of Michigan; my dissertation explored the relationship between obscenity and Jews in American literature and culture.

In January 2009, I published a book, American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2009), reviews of which you can find here. Since September 2009, I have served as a Dorot Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. I’ve reviewed Jewish books for publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Forward, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Globe and Mail and many more. I also serve as a contributing editor to Tablet Magazine, where I write a weekly roundup of newly published Jewish books.