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!
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Midrash: Poetry Workshop with Alicia Ostriker (via Zoom)
November 19, 2023 @ 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm
$150.00
Midrash writing is a modern adaptation of an ancient rabbinic form–retelling some of the compelling stories in the Bible, from the point of view of the characters. In workshop, we start by re-imagining Adam and Eve, then go on to more complicated tales, discovering what they can mean for us today. Participants work at speed—some exercises 1 minute, some exercises 7 minutes—in order to short-circuit mental censorship. Participants read their poems (or pass, if they are uncomfortable reading to a group), and we laugh, and sometimes cry. Expect the unpredictable.
This class will be composed of craft lecturing by Alicia Ostriker, with several writing prompts, and brief time for in-class writing.
Alicia Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. Author of 17 collections of poetry, she has been twice nominated for the National Book Award, and has twice received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, among other honors. As a critic she is the author of the now-classic Stealing the Language: the Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America, and other books on poetry and on the Bible, most recently For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book. Her most recent collections of poems are Waiting for the Light and The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019..Her poems have been translated into numerous languages including Hebrew and Arabic. She is currently the New York State Poet Laureate and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
“Alicia Ostriker has become one of those brilliantly provocative and imaginatively gifted contemporaries whose iconoclastic expression, whether in prose or poetry, is essential to understanding our American selves.” —Joyce Carol Oates
“Ostriker is our morning-after psalmist; our wild, justice-starved, embodied, dazzling intelligence in its unending argument with itself, he world, and God.”—Eleanor Wilner
“Ostriker forges ahead, more audacious and sure-footed than ever, invigorated by her task to take us with her all the way. —Toi Derricotte