Mark Oppenheimer has been covering American religion for 25 years. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, and has taught at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College and Yale, where he was the founding director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the “Beliefs” column, about religion, for The New York Times, and he has also written for publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, GQ, Slate and many more.

He created "Unorthodox," the world’s most popular podcast about Jewish life and culture, with over seven million downloads to date. More recently, he hosted an eight-part podcast called "Gatecrashers," about the history of Jews and antisemitism at Ivy League schools.

He is the author of five books, including THE NEWISH JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA and, most recently, SQUIRREL HILL: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son and two dogs.

Books by Mark Oppenheimer

Judy Blume: A Life

by Mark Oppenheimer - Biography, Nonfiction

To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than 55 years, her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world’s expectations of what literature for young people can be --- frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little is known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now. In JUDY BLUME, journalist, historian and longtime Blume aficionado Mark Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume’s beloved novels, including early, unpublished works that shed light on the pathbreaking writer she would become.