Lillian Schlissel is professor emerita of Brooklyn College-CUNY, where she was director of American studies. Her books include Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey; Far From Home: Families of the Westward Journey, written with Byrd Gibbens and Elizabeth Hampsten, Western Women, Their Land, Their Lives; and Western Women’s Reader (with Catherine Lavender). Schlissel is a member of the editorial board of Studies in American Jewish Literature and is working on a history of five women of American vaudeville.