Hagar Tenenbaum

Hagar Tenenbaum is an award-winning Israeli author who has published eight books and won the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Writers, the Dvora Omer Prize for Youth Literature, and three Geffen Awards for Fantasy Literature.

Hagar was born in Kibbutz Barkai and grew up in a children's house. At the age of twenty, she traveled to Japan to study Zen Buddhism and spent a year in a monastery. Upon her return to Israel, she published her first novel about her life in the monastery. The book became a bestseller and launched her literary career.

Her late mother, Miriam, was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who saved herself, her younger sister, and her cousin by disguising themselves as Polish peasants and entering Germany to find work. Hagar grew up hearing her mother’s stories, and the theme of the Holocaust and World War II recurs in her books and in comic work she created in collaboration with illustrators.

In addition to her literary work, Hagar is involved in literary editing and teaching creative writing.

Hagar is married and a mother of three daughters. She is inseparable from her black poodle, Phoebe, who loves to curl up on her lap while she writes.