Author · Playwright · Poet

Laurie S.
Sherman

Writing from the intersection of theater, ritual, poetry, liturgy, and scholarship.

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The Author

A Voice at the Intersection

Feminist, Jewish, playwright, poet, essayist — writing where theater meets liturgy.

Laurie S. Sherman writes at the place where the stage and the Spirit meet — where a woman's voice, long silenced by tradition, rises to reclaim the text. Her work spans poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and essay, bound together by a single animating question: what does it mean to inherit a tradition and remake it from the inside?

Her poetry is spiritual and Sonoran — rooted in the desert of Green Valley, Arizona, drawing on a landscape that transcends any single tradition. Its silences, its sudden light, its ancient patience speak to the human spirit at large. A scholar as well as a practitioner, she brings rigorous textual engagement to work that is, at its heart, deeply felt.

With ten books in print and plays moving into production, Laurie S. Sherman is one of the most prolific and distinctive voices in contemporary Jewish feminist literature.

FeministJewishPlaywrightPoetEssayistFictionNon-FictionLiturgyScholarship
Published Works

Books

Ten books in print, spanning liturgy, feminist scholarship, sacred theater, and essay.

Cover of The Miriam Syndrome
Non-Fiction · Feminist

The Miriam Syndrome

How Women Who Lead Are Removed, Rewritten, and Forgotten

A rigorous and passionate examination of how women in leadership are erased from history, scripture, and memory — and what it means to reclaim them.

Cover of Leaving the Narrow Place
Haggadah · Liturgy

Leaving the Narrow Place

The Women of Pesach

A feminist Haggadah that centers the women of Pesach — the midwives, the prophetess, the singers — in the telling. From darkness to light, from silence to song.

Cover of Plays for Two Voices
Plays · Theater

Plays for Two Voices

Four taut short plays where dialogue is the action. Two people, one history, no escape. Intimates, relatives, witnesses — each locked in conflict, each guarding a silence.

Cover of KNOT.
Non-Fiction · Essay

KNOT.

Holding Inherited Conflict Without Annihilation

A book about why solutions keep failing. Focusing on inherited conflicts — especially Israel/Palestine — Sherman examines the moral and psychological pressure fields that collapse complexity into certainty.

Cover of In Sarah's Tent
Play · Ritual

In Sarah's Tent

A Sacred Ritual Play in Two Acts

A sacred ritual play that gathers the women of Jewish tradition — biblical, mystical, modern — into the ancient space of Sarah's Tent. Reader's theater, liturgy, memory, and invocation at all once.

Cover of In Sarah's Tent: The Women Speak
Play · Ritual

In Sarah's Tent: The Women Speak

A companion volume and expanded edition of the sacred ritual play, in which the women of the tradition speak their own truths into the sacred space of the Tent.

Cover of Scapegoat
Non-Fiction · Essay

Scapegoat

Holding Fear Without Sacrifice

An exploration of the ancient mechanism of scapegoating — how fear becomes projection, and how communities survive by expelling what they cannot hold within themselves.

Cover of She Who Dwells in Spirit
Liturgy · Poetry

She Who Dwells in Spirit

A Prayerbook of Light and Renewal

A feminist Jewish prayerbook that restores the feminine divine to the center of worship — prayers for the turning of the year, for grief, for joy, for the ordinary sacred.

Cover of She Dwells in Spirit
Liturgy · Poetry

She Dwells in Spirit

A Companion Prayerbook for Your Joys, Sorrows and Your Life

A companion prayerbook for the full arc of a life — for the moments that liturgy rarely names, and the ones it has always known.

Cover of Return to Presence
Liturgy · Poetry

Return to Presence

Prayers from the Divine Within — A Feminist Shabbat Prayerbook

A prayerbook for entering Shabbat with steadiness, breath, and attention. The full Friday night through Havdalah cycle, shaped by women's voices and lived experience — relational, grounded, and attentive to the body as well as soul.

Theater

Productions

Plays in production and upcoming staged readings — seasons 2026 through 2027.

In Sarah's Tent

Summer 2026

TBA — Green Valley, AZ

A production of this sacred ritual play, gathering women's voices from across the Jewish tradition into one luminous evening of theater, liturgy, and memory.

Plays for Two Voices

Fall 2026

TBA — Tucson, AZ

A full production of these four short plays, each a collision of two people and one unresolvable history. Rehearsals begin August 2026.

The Miriam Syndrome: A Staged Reading

Winter 2026–27

TBA

A staged reading drawn from the non-fiction work, exploring how women who lead are removed, rewritten, and forgotten — and what it takes to remember them.

Leaving the Narrow Place

Spring 2027

TBA

A theatrical Seder performance of this feminist Haggadah, centering the women of Pesach in a living, embodied ritual for the whole community.

Sacred theatrical space
"Theater is the oldest form of liturgy. Every stage is an altar."
Get in Touch

Contact

For inquiries about readings, productions, speaking engagements, or to share your thoughts on the work — Laurie welcomes your message.

[email protected]

Green Valley, Arizona