Kitty Zeldis, ONE OF THEM: A Novel
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author Kitty Zeldis, a pseudonym drawn from her maiden name and college nickname, joins Zibby to discuss her new historical novel ONE OF THEM. Set at Vassar in the late 1940s, the book explores the complexities of identity, friendship, prejudice, and assimilation through the story of two young Jewish women navigating very different choices about how openly to live their Jewishness. Kitty shares how her own experiences shaped the novel, reflects on changing perceptions of Jewish identity on college campuses and beyond, and opens up about her writing process, career journey, and earlier works.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, listeners. We have totally booked live coming up this fall, and I hope you'll be a part of it. |
| 0:06.0 | We have three events in New York City, September 19th, 25th, and 30th, in New York, where I'll be doing six interviews live each day. |
| 0:14.0 | We also have a petite retreat in Greenwich on October 4th. |
| 0:18.0 | Go to Zibbimedia.com and event or and or event bright and search the events |
| 0:23.7 | and please come. I can't wait to meet you in person. |
| 0:29.2 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibi. |
| 0:34.6 | Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview |
| 0:38.7 | today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work |
| 0:44.7 | I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, |
| 0:51.3 | I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time |
| 0:55.7 | curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect |
| 1:01.2 | with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to Zibbibbymedia.com and |
| 1:07.6 | follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. |
| 1:16.0 | Kitty Zelda is the author of one of them, a novel. |
| 1:23.4 | Born in Chadera Israel, Kitty is the pseudonym for the award-winning author of nine novels and over 40 books for children. |
| 1:28.6 | Her essays, articles, and short fiction have been published in many national and literary publications. |
| 1:34.0 | She is also the fiction editor of Lilith Magazine. Zelda lives in Brooklyn, New York. |
| 1:40.2 | Welcome, Kitty. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about one of them, a novel. Congratulations. |
| 1:46.0 | Thank you. First of all, just want to get this, clear this up. You have a pseudonym. Why? |
| 1:56.4 | Well, because the previous novels that I wrote were contemporary. And in 2018, I published a novel with Harper Collins called Not Our Kind, which is also in the 40s. |
| 2:19.3 | And they said, we think this is different enough to kind of warrant a relaunch. And so, I mean, they asked me, and Zelda's is my maiden name. So that felt obvious. And Kitty is a college nickname. I have a whole host of people who've called me Kitty for many years. And so it felt like quite natural. And I thought, okay, we'll do that. Wow. Very cool. Okay. So just had to ask. |
| 2:24.6 | Okay, tell listeners what one of them is about. It's a friendship novel, not a romance. |
... |
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