Generative Workshop: “Writing the Biblical Persona: Doubt, Devotion & Courage” with Avia Tadmor
December 13 @ 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Register for this workshop here.
You can order Avia’s book here, with a percentage of every purchase going to support Yetzirah.
The poet Mary Oliver famously said, “attention is the beginning of devotion.” In this workshop, we will practice paying attention as a pathway to deep inquiry, courage, imagination, and devotion. We will read selected poems from a range of contemporary women poets who draw, at times, on biblical personas—Marie Howe, Mary Szybist, Carlene Kucharczyk, Isabella DeSendi, Jessica Jacobs, Carlie Hoffman, Nan Cohen, Sarah Ghazal Ali, and Traci Brimhall—whose writing is courageously awake to the world and their own faith-fueled, and often doubt-fueled, movement through it. Through in-workshop exercises and reflection on our own creative process, this workshop will encourage you to deepen your own inquiry into the worlds (yes, all of them!) you inhabit. In particular, we’ll explore the affordances of writing through a persona–religious or not–to investigate personal history, the (oft-fragmented) self, and daily encounters as sites of discovery, doubt, and devotion.Workshop Dates & Cost
December 13, 2026, 12:00-3:00 PM
$108—standard registration $87—18% discounted registration for Yetzirah Members (you can become a member here)
*As we want our offerings to be accessible to all, there is a pay-what-you-can option if this pricing is a hardship. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, but please contact Program Coordinator Kyra Lisse at klisse@yetzirahpoets.org if you would like a sliding-scale ticket.
