Ranen Omer-Sherman was a founding member of a desert kibbutz and worked as a guide in the Sinai and Negev for many years. He is currently the JHFE Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville. He is the author or editor of five books including Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff, Roth (2002), Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert (2006) The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008), Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture (2013), and Imagining Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (2015), as well as numerous essays on Jewish writers.