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Dr. Dara Horn

Founder and President

Dara Horn is a nationally acclaimed, award‑winning writer whose body of work now encompasses seven books—five celebrated novels, a groundbreaking graphic novel exploring Jewish civilization, and the widely lauded essay collection People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (W. W. Norton, 2021). Named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, she has earned three National Jewish Book Awards and has been a finalist for numerous literary prizes.


Horn’s nonfiction regularly illuminates contemporary Jewish experience for broad audiences. Her April 2023 Atlantic article, “Is Holocaust Education Making Anti‑Semitism Worse?”, sparked international discussion, adding to essays published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Tablet, and The Jewish Review of Books. A sought‑after lecturer and public intellectual, she has spoken at hundreds of venues across North America, Israel, and Australia and served on Harvard University’s Antisemitism Advisory Group.


Holding both a B.A. and a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Yiddish literature from Harvard, Horn has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Yeshiva University, and as the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard. She is channeling this scholarly expertise into The Tell Institute, the nonprofit she founded to introduce students—and the larger American public—to the richness of Jewish civilization.


Horn lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children, continuing to write, teach, and advocate for a deeper, more nuanced public understanding of Jewish life—past and present.

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