For their debut book, Don’t Feed the Lion, CNN anchor and senior global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga and Israeli news anchor Yonit Levi didn’t think small. The friends decided to write for a tough audience—middle graders—on a big topic: antisemitism. When a celebrity soccer player makes an antisemitic remark that goes viral, it forces Theo, 13, and everyone in his extended circle to confront their own responses and responsibilities. PW spoke with the pair about their determination to unpack complex emotional and societal themes for their audience, and how they navigated the publishing world while channeling their deadline-centered DNA.

In your acknowledgments, you discuss how the events of October 7 prompted you two to write this book. Had you been looking for a project to collaborate on before this, or did these events bring you together? How did your partnership begin?

Bianna Golodryga: It was rather organic. Yonit and I had known each other for about 10 years. We met when she came to the U.S. to cover the 2016 presidential election, and she interviewed me. We just really hit it off. We call each other [regularly] like sisters.

The idea for the book was planted a few years before October 7. There had been a few high-profile celebrities who had posted some things that were very antisemitic on social media. And my son at the time, who was 11 years old and a big fan of one of these celebrities asked, “Why doesn’t he like us? Can I not go to his basketball games? Does he not want me there?” And I didn’t know how to answer that question. I reached out to the school to ask what resources they had on antisemitism, and I was surprised to find that there was really nothing for this age group at all. And they’re such an impressionable age group.

Yonit Levi: [The collaboration] was slow-cooked, and then it happened very fast. We talked every night after October 7, and I think we were each other’s shoulder to cry on. I mean, we’re both TV anchors. We know how to be very composed, but you need that friend where you can show your vulnerability. And we have kids that exact age. I remember Bianna saying, “We have to do something.” And she brought that idea to the table: let’s write the book we can’t find for that age group. It felt like, in this darkness, we could try and do something.

You thank Arcadia for “taking a chance on us and this book when no one else would.” Can you talk about the challenges you faced while shopping this manuscript around? What made Arcadia the right fit?

Golodryga: By January 2024 we already had the outline for a book and the proposal. And I fortunately have good agents here in the U.S. We started sending around the proposal and the pitch to all of the major publishers. We thought that there would be some interest—and we came to find out there really wasn’t.

One night, I happened to be sitting next to Michael Lynton, who formerly ran Sony and now is the chairman of Snap—I’d known him for a few years. I was sort of lamenting and he said, “I’m really interested in this topic.” He said he had a small publishing company and it wasn’t the type of work they usually publish, but “why don’t you go ahead and send me the book, and if we like it, we’ll publish it.” He was our knight in shining armor.

They’re a small shop, and this is the first that they’ve done a topic of this scale. But we were also able to expedite the publication. I think if this had been a larger publishing house, it may have been well into next year, who knows? We finished with the book in July 2025 and we were having meeting with Arcadia and asked, “Is November too ambitious?” And they said, “No, let’s do it.” And so here we are.

Levi: We were actually pushing—I think if it was up to them at the end, they could have waited a few months. But you know, we’re two news people, and for us to sit on something for six months seems like forever.

Antisemitism is such a vast and complex topic. Did you have to decide where to draw those boundaries in telling this particular story?

Levi: We definitely did. We went down a lot of rabbit holes, particularly because we decided that the grandparents are going to be Israeli, and that was kind of my portfolio. We found ourselves explaining the situation in Israel. And then Bianna said, “You know what, let’s take it back from October 7.” Because we wanted to say something more universal about this problem that existed before and will, sadly, probably continue to exist.

And we really wanted to tell the story of this family. We fell in love with them while writing it.

Is there another collaboration on the horizon?


Levi: We definitely know what the next book is. I think it might be for adults. and that it perhaps has a little bit to do with our daily working lives.

Golodryga: It’s been a great experience for us. I mean, [in this interview] we’re on the other side of the microphone here and we’re typically the ones asking the questions. So it’s been a learning experience for us and a humbling one. But another great takeaway is we’ve come out of it even better friends. I didn’t think that was possible.

Don’t Feed the Lion by Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi. Arcadia, $15.99 paper, Nov. 11 ISBN 978-1-4671-9621-5