Jerusalem Maiden (Carner)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Tel Aviv, Israel
• Education—B.A. ,Hebrew University (Jerusalem); M.A.,
   State University of New York, Stony Brook
• Awards—Forward National Literature Award
• Currently—lives in Bridgehampton, Long Island and New
   York City, NY


Before turning to fiction writing, Talia Carner worked for Redbook magazine and served as the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine. An adjunct professor of marketing at Long Island University and a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies, she was a volunteer counselor and lecturer for the Small Business Administration and a member of United States Information Agency missions to Russia, teaching women entrepreneurial skills.

Carner’s activities in women’s organizations led to her participation at the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing, where she learned of the atrocities of The Dying Rooms—the Chinese orphanages where the documented death rate was 80%—and about the U.S.’s courts betrayal of molested children.

Helping African women to develop a campaign against clitoridectomy, she was exposed to the plight of women in societies that subjected millions of girls to this brutal mutilation. Her education about violence against women continued when she assisted Indian women in a campaign to end the burning of brides over dowry disputes. A sought-after keynote lecturer at renowned organizations, Carner speaks on both universal and culture-specific issues facing today’s women across the globe.

As Carner researched and wrote about the difficulties women face, she examined her own family’s ten-generation history in Jerusalem. Because her grandmother, with whom she had been close, had been blocked from developing her extraordinary artistic talent, Carner set out to explore the religious world in which obedient 12- to 14-year-olds were expected to hasten the Messiah’s arrival and save the world Jewry by procreating. Her novel Jerusalem Maiden (2011) depicts a woman’s struggle for self-expression against her society’s religious dictates.  

In the early 1980s, while at Redbook magazine, Carner was the first to define the characteristics of female baby-boomers as having a later marriage-age and being more educated, career-oriented, and health- and civic-conscious than their older counterparts. While the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine—then one of only four females to head a major American magazine—she was the first to document the demographics of female business owners.

Launching her own marketing consulting firm to Fortune 500 companies, Carner commissioned independent research and challenged both public perceptions and the U.S. government’s definition of entrepreneurship, a debate that ultimately established the White House Oversight Committee and brought changes to the way the Office of Labor Statistics gathered and analyzed data about husband-wife business ownership.

In 1993, on Carner’s second U.S. Information Agency (USIA) mission to Russia, she was caught in the uprising of the parliament against then-president Boris Yeltsin. Her report to the USIA about her escape was the seed for her first (unpublished) novel and the start of her fiction-writing career.

Carner’s first published novel, Puppet Child, launched The Protective Parent Reform Act, a law now passed in several stares and under consideration in many others, and has become the platform of two State Senatorial candidates. Her second novel, China Doll, was the platform for her 2007 presentation at the U.N. about infanticide in China—the first in U.N. history.  

In addition to published articles on issues of family court, infanticide in China, and women’s plights in developing societies, Carner’s award-winning personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chocolate for Women, Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup anthologies, as well as The Best Jewish Writing 2003.

Her short stories have been published in literary magazines such as Midstream, Lynx Eye, River Sedge, Moxie, Lilith, Rosebud, Confrontation, North Atlantic Review, Litro, and Midwest Literary Magazine. An excerpt from Jersusalem Maiden is included in The Best New Writing 2011 as the “Editor’s Choice Award” and was nominated to the prestigious Pushcart Prize. The book-length novel Jerusalem Maiden won the Forward National Literature Award in the “historical fiction” category.

A 7th generation Sabra born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Ms. Carner served in the Israel Defense Force (IDF.) She received a B.A. degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Psychology and Sociology and a Master's degree in Economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Talia Carner is a board member of Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, (HBI) the Jewish women research center at Brandeis University. She is also an honorary board member of several anti-domestic violence and child abuse intervention organizations.

She and her husband, Ron Carner, (president of Maccabi USA) have four grown children. The couple lives in Bridgehampton, Long Island and in Manhattan, New York. (From the author's website.)