Articles
The Female Jewish Snipers Who Inspired The Night Sparrow PB Daily, Jewish Book Council, July 2, 2025
After months of training at the inaugural Central Women’s Sniper Training School, an all-female Red Army platoon arrived on the 2nd Belorussian Front. It was February, 1944, and these women were amongst the first female snipers to ever be in combat. Their male superior officers were unimpressed. The colonel ordered the platoon to remain at division headquarters, but Sergeant Bella Epstein refused, saying, “No, we’re snipers, send us where we’re supposed to go.”
“Remembering the Unacknowledged Sacrifices of the Red Army’s Female Snipers” LitHub May 8, 2025
Shelly Sanders on the Brave Women Silenced by the Country They Fought to Protect
On a chilly March afternoon in Poland, 1945, Guards Lieutenant Nina Lobovskaya, commander of a Red Army female snipers’ platoon, had orders akin to the battle of David and Goliath: defend a vital section of highway from a large Nazi unit with fifteen snipers. Twenty-one year-old Lobkovskaya, with apple cheeks and a ready smile that belied her determination to kill fascists, had already triumphed in a weeklong sniper duel with a German officer (who was training subordinates to stalk Soviet snipers), and she’d taken part in the liberations of Nevel, Belorussia, and Warsaw.
“ADHD: A Writer’s Curse or Advantage?” Writer’s Digest. December 28, 2023
Author Shelly Sanders shares her journey with undiagnosed ADHD and questions whether it’s helpful or harmful for her writing and life.
It’s five-thirty in the morning and I’m drinking black coffee (no sugar) to slow the racing thoughts in my head. I’m sitting at my writing desk, cluttered with my laptop, books, and journals filled with my hard-to-read-scrawl. My foot taps the floor like a compulsion. I squirm in my seat. Energy charges through my veins like static electricity. I arch my back. As the caffeine spreads through my brain, my excess energy decreases and my ability to focus increases. My foot stills. The distracting thoughts in my head fade. I concentrate on my screen, reading paragraphs I wrote yesterday, spotting awkward sentences and words that don’t fit. Finally, I am hyper-focused. Finally, everything around me blurs to a distant hum. Finally, I hunch over my keyboard, revise, and write.
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“Balancing History and Story in Historical Fiction,” Writer’s Digest. May 2, 2022
Author Shelly Sanders shares the historical fiction books that led her to writing her own historical fiction novels, and tips on balancing history and story when pursuing historical fiction.
Growing up in suburban Chicago, an hour from the Wisconsin border, I devoured The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. These novels, which begin in Wisconsin in the late 1800s, were my introduction to historical fiction. Wilder’s simple yet insightful words gave me a vivid sense of what it was like to grow up in midwest America: “They were cosy and comfortable in their little house made of logs, with the snow drifted around it and the wind crying because it could not get in by the fire.”
Laura was the reason I read and re-read these books…
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“Family Secrets Rooted in Latvia,” Jewish Book Council.
I decided it was time to investigate my Nana’s guarded past in 2017, when my son was exploring universities. She’d died when I was thirteen, taking her childhood secrets about growing up in Russia with her to the grave. Nana never spoke about why she’d concealed her Judaism when she came to Canada. When my great-grandmother, Sophie, died (she had immigrated after WWII), Nana didn’t even let my mother attend the funeral; she didn’t want her knowing Sophie was buried in a Jewish cemetery.
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“Daughters of the Occupation,” Lilith. May 18, 2022
A Q&A with author Shelly Sanders
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