Leah Lax was raised in a Jewish family in Dallas, Texas. She joined the hasidim and spent thirty years trying to reclaim the roots her family had left behind. Now, on the other side of all that and grateful for second chances, she has published award-winning fiction, nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work for stage includes major productions with both the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Symphony.

When Leah Lax was asked to write an opera to celebrate local immigrants, she began by spending a year listening to accounts of upheaval, migration, and arrival told in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered America and found its great beating heart.

In interludes between the astounding and powerful stories in Not From Here, The Song of America, "In a way," she writes, "we Americans are all immigrants."

Her previous book Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home was the first gay memoir ever to come out of the Jewish ultra Orthodox world, now a modern opera by composer Lori Laitman.

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