After working for The Equity Project at Indiana University for fifteen years, educator and poet Shana Ritter decided to try her hand at writing a novel. She envisioned a mother and her daughters facing expulsion from their homeland because they belonged to a banned religion. A Jew herself, Ritter traveled to Spain to learn about the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada-inspired expulsion of the Jews and Muslims in 1492. The result was the novel, “In the Time of Leaving,” published in 2019. Ritter also has published a chapbook of her poetry, “Stairs of Separation.”

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