Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, songwriter, performer and Torah scholar based in Brooklyn. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, 6x6, Court Green, anthologies from NYU Press and Knopf, and a chapbook from Artscape Press.

A classically trained violinist since the age of three, Alicia is the songwriter and bandleader of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of women in Torah, which has performed across the U.S., Canada and Europe, released two albums, and garnered critical praise from The Huffington Post, the New Yorker, and LA Weekly.

Alicia is the recipient of grants and scholarships from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Six Points Fellowship, and the LABA Fellowship at the 14th St Y, and has served as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, performing American fiddle music in Central America and Kuwait.

She is currently at work editing her first collection of poems and composing “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff,” an experimental song-cycle about the spiritual implications of the financial collapse.

An experienced and dedicated Jewish educator, in 2010 Alicia founded Personal Torah, offering creative, meaningful bar/bat mitzvah preparation and adult Torah study in person or online.

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