Neal Karlen

Neal Karlen is a long-time contributor to The New York Times. He was an Associate Editor at Newsweek and Contributing Editor for Rolling Stone. He has authored many books, including the recently published "The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews" (William Morrow, 2008) and "Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew" (Touchstone, 2005). He has studied Yiddish at Brown University, New York's Inlingua Institute, and the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Journalism, where he has taught non-fiction writing for six years. He lives in Minneapolis.