Carole S. Kessner is professor emerita, Department of Comparative Studies, SUNY Stony Brook. She is the recipient of the Marie Syrkin Fellowship for 1994, and the winner of the 2009  National Jewish Book Award for Biography. The author of many essays and articles ranging from "Milton's Hebraic Herculean Hero" to "The Emma Lazarus-Henry James Connection: Eight Letters," she is the editor and contributor to The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals (1994) and is the co-editor of  and contributor to Studies in American Jewish Literature: vol.29, 2010. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.