Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry (2023)
Finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, Berru Award for Poetry, in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash (2022)

Her Birth and Later Years is the first complete collection of the work of Irena Klepfisz—trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values. For fifty years, Klepfisz has written powerful, searching poems about relatives murdered during the war, recent immigrants, a lost Yiddish writer, a young Palestinian boy in Gaza, and the people in her daily life: office workers, peace activists, lesbian lovers, and friends. Born during World War II, Klepfisz's poems detail her early years in Poland and demonstrate how the tragedies of the twentieth century continue to shape our lives today. Her poems also dwell in beauty and the sublime; she draws attention to the miracle of urban flowers, the complexities of rural life, the place and meaning of art in our lives, and her increasing awareness of her aging body. Starting in the 1970s, Klepfisz played a key role in the emergent U.S. Jewish lesbian and the international women and peace movements. Her poetry broke new ground in its brazen lesbian voice and offered new poetic ways to investigate the trauma of the Holocaust. A passionate Yiddishist, her bilingual English/Yiddish poems have been widely anthologized. Klepfisz co-edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology and A Jewish Women's Call for Peace. She is the author of Dreams of an Insomniac (essays) and four books of poetry, including Keeper of Accounts. In her introduction to Klepfisz's A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, Adrienne Rich wrote: "Her sense of phrase, of line, of the shift of tone, is almost flawless." Her Birth and Later Years was Finalist for the Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.