Joy Ladin is a widely published essayist and poet, literary scholar, and nationally known speaker on transgender issues. From 2003 to 2021, she held the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University; her gender transition and return to teaching in 2008 made her the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. 

Joy is the author of twelve books, including the National Jewish Book Award-winning revised second edition of The Book of Anna (EOAGH, 2021); 2018’s The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective (Brandeis UP, 2018), a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and Triangle Award that received a starred review in Publishers Weekly; Through the Door of Life (University of Wisconsin, 2013), a memoir of gender transition that was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and winner of a Forward Fives Award; and ten books of poetry, including 2022’s Shekhinah Speaks (selva oscura, 2022), Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press, 2017), Psalms (Resource, 2010), Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life, and two Lambda Literary Award finalists, Transmigration (Sheep Meadow, 2009) and Impersonation (Sheep Meadow, 2015). Joy has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship and two Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research fellowships, among other honors.

Since coming out as transgender in 2008, Joy have become a nationally recognized speaker on transgender issues. She has been featured in many National Public Radio interviews, most notably “On Being with Krista Tippett,” which has been rebroadcast three times, as well as numerous interviews and profiles in numerous publications.

Joy holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Princeton University, where she was awarded the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship as top graduate student in the Humanities, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.

Joy’s recent work has been widely recognized, including The Book of Anna which was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry; the Massachusetts Cultural Council awarded Joy a poetry fellowship; her tenth book of poetry, Shekhinah Speaks, was published; and her eleventh book of poetry, Family, has been accepted by Persea for publication in 2024. DoubleBack Books recently released a newly revised edition of Impersonation as a free downloadable PDF in 2023, and a book of selected essays on how gender is changing, Once Out of Nature, is currently making the rounds.

From 2020-2021, Joy held a weekly conversation show, “Containing Multitudes,” discussing identity, religion, and literature with a wide-range of guests. In Fall 2019, Keshet recognized her work with a Hachamat Lev award.

Joy has given talks and readings at many universities and colleges, including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Boston University, George Washington University, the University of Arizona, the University of Connecticut, the University of San Francisco, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College. 

Joy has also been a featured speaker outside academia, including delivering keynote talks at the 21st World Congress of LGBT Jews, and the 2015 Asanbe Diversity Symposium at Austin Peay State University. She has spoken to dozens of Jewish communities around the country, and served as scholar-in-residence at a number of synagogues. She is a member of the Board of Keshet, a national organization devoted to full inclusion of LGBTQ Jews in the Jewish world.

For selected videos of talks and readings, including Joy’s TEDx talk, “Ain’t I a Woman?”, her “On Being” interview with Krista Tippett, and “Beyond the Tower of Babel: A New Approach to Inclusive Policy,” a webinar offered through the Sol Price School of Public Policy of the University of Southern California, click here.