Don­na Rifkind grew up in Los Ange­les entranced by the Euro­pean aura of her Jew­ish grand­moth­ers and aunts. Her lit­er­ary crit­i­cism appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, The Wash­ing­ton Post, Com­men­tary, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. In 2006, she was a final­ist for the Nona Bal­akian Cita­tion for review­ing from the Nation­al Book Crit­ics Circle.