Simone Zelitch is the author of five novels, most recently Judenstaat (Tor 2016, PM 2020), an alternative history set in a Jewish State established in Germany post-Holocaust that follows an archivist as she pieces together that country's history for its fortieth anniversary celebration.
Earlier novels range in subject matter from Mississippi Freedom Summer (Waveland, Head and the Hand Press 2015) to a 14th Century peasant revolt, The Confession of Jack Straw (Black Heron Press 1994), focusing on marginal characters and historical complexities. Her work-in-progress, The Hill, is set in a high-end nursing home where residents' lives are guided by Pathways, a corporate algorithm which knows them better than they know themselves.
Essays and short fiction include "Four Writers on Ursula K. Le Guin"(Another Chicago Magazine 2018), "Men in High Castles" (an examination of Philip K. Dick in Art Papers), and "How Philip Roth Predicted the Rise of Donald Trump" (The Forward, 2016), and short fables broadcast as part of the National Public Radio series Hannukah Lights.
Simone's novels have been taught in classrooms across the country, including at the University of Miami course, "Bad Jews". Since 1993, has been a professor at Community College of Philadelphia where she established their Creative Writing Program, leads multi-genre workshops, and writes in the summer, mostly.