WELCOME TO THE HVWC CALENDAR: home of all our upcoming readings, events and workshops. You can view by list or calendar (see right menu to choose). Click the colored tabs below to show only specific options. Our workshops run as multi-session series or one-day “intensives.” Note, we list the multi-session courses on the first day they meet only. The full dates of the session are described in the course descriptions. You would need to scroll back to the start date if you needed to enroll for something already underway. But do let us know if you want to join something in midstream since we need the blessing of the instructor. Questions? Email us.
Workshops – This category encompasses all one-day and multi-week classes, whether in person or via Zoom.
Readings – Our readings are in many different genres and take place in person, on Zoom, or both!
HVWC Recurring Events – This category encompasses such regular favorites as Open Mic, Open Write, and Submission Sunday.
Special Events – These other creative experiences are sure to interest our creative community!
- This event has passed.
Jewish Writers Poetry Workshop with Sean Singer via Zoom
December 24, 2023 @ 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
$350.00
Please note that this workshop is now sold out! Thanks for all the interest. If you want to be put on the waiting list for this workshop, or have questions about other workshop options, please email
This two-day workshop (December 24-25th) is for writers who wish to engage with themes of Jewishness—Jewish identity, Jewish cultural history, Jewish as a religious or racial category, Jewish family, Jewish exile, Jewish diaspora, or Jewish ethics—in a time of rising antisemitism.
The “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville in 2017 and the mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 challenge us to consider how poets are meant to write about questions of ethnicity and identity while we are under attack.
There will be craft talks with generative prompts, a variety of poems from underrated and overlooked Jewish poets, and 30-minute manuscript consultations with the instructor. At the end of the two days, writers will leave with a stronger grasp of ways both Jews and poets exist on the periphery. The poet, like the Jewish person, is perpetually in exile. Those who feel intergenerational trauma and exile know this is part of both entity and identity.
We’re hosting the workshop on Zoom over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, a time that for Jews in the United States and other Christian countries, can be a time of discomfort or isolation. The goal of this workshop is to repurpose and transform this time.
The workshop is not limited to Jewish poets; any writer interested in reading and writing about this subject is welcome to attend.
Course takeaways:
- Intensive feedback on developmental ideas, drafts, revision, and process
- Detailed notes on your poems that you make in the workshop, or that you bring to the workshop
- Increased confidence about the themes of the course and how to give attention to these from your own perspective
- Focus on a greater literacy of a variety of Jewish poets and poems which will lead to greater capacity to write with clarity about these themes (Jewish identity, exile, intergenerational trauma, and poems from the diaspora in English and other languages)
- 30-minute consultation on your poems with the instructor. These can take place either during the two days, or after the conclusion of the workshop to allow for more time to process the material.
The first class will run Sunday, Dec. 24th from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and from 3-6 p.m., with a two-hour lunch break from 1-3 p.m. The second class will run Monday, Dec. 25th also from 10-1 and 3-6.
Class will be taught via Zoom. The link will be emailed (please check spam) at the time of registration and again 48hours before the class. Please email [email protected] with questions.
Instructor Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1974. He is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, 2022); and two chapbooks, Passport (Beard of Bees Press, 2007) and Keep Right on Playing Through the Mirror Over the Water (Beard of Bees Press, 2010).
He has a BA in English with honors from Indiana University, Bloomington (1997), an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis (1999), and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers-Newark (2013).
He is the recipient of an Artist’s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems appear in many anthologies including A Face to Meet the Faces, Music’s Spell: Poems about Music and Musicians, Jazz Poems, and Callaloo: The Best of Callaloo Poetry. He was guest editor of Locuspoint: New York City. He has taught creative writing and a variety of interdisciplinary courses at Hunter College, SUNY Binghamton, Northern Arizona University, Barnard College, and Rutgers-Newark. He lives in Ossining, New York.