Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, a writer, activist, and professor, was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, and has worked in social change movements since the sixties. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught the first Women's Studies course in the department. She currently teaches at Queens College in the Jewish Studies, History and Comparative Literature departments. She is the author of several books, including: The Issue Is Power (Aunt Lute Books 1992), My Jewish Face & Other Stories (Aunt Lute Books, 1990), We Speak in Code (Motheroot Publications, 1980), and The Colors of Jews (Indiana University Press 2007). Her writings are widely published and anthologized.