Yetzirah 2025 Jewish Poetry Conference: Public Events, June 24-27, 2025

Curious about our previous conferences? View videos of public events and learn more about our keynote, faculty, & inaugural cohort:

Thank you to our conference partner

Thank you to our event cosponsors

And gratitude to our local supporters

GENERATIVE WORKSHOPS (back to top)
Our generative workshops will be led by Sharon Dolin, Dana Levin, and Victoria Redel. Participants will be divided into three workshop cohorts, which will attend a different class each day of the conference, allowing participants to work with all three of our faculty. 

ELIGIBILITY (back to top)
Regardless of your religious practice or lack thereof, or whether you think of yourself or your writing as “Jewish enough,” applications are open to anyone who self-identifies as a Jewish poet and feels that such a gathering would be meaningful to them and to their poetry. In addition, we require the following:

• All applicants must be 21 years of age or older by the start of the Conference in July 2025
• To cultivate community, all applicants will be required to stay on campus (though apartments will be shared, all rooms will be single-occupancy, with accessible accommodations available)
• We also ask that participants attend all official events, unless their health requires otherwise
  • All participants will agree to take a COVID test if requested due to possible exposure (tests will be provided). More extensive COVID policies can be found below
  • All applicants will need to show proof of a negative COVID test taken within 24-hours before the first day of the conference
• FOR RETURNING PARTICIPANTS: In order to have continuity in our community year-to-year, while also making room for new participants, we ask that if a participant has joined us for two years in a row, they wait a year until applying to be a Fellow, Scholar, or Contributor.
  • On these off years, we welcome all participants to join us as part of the Dayenu Cohort.

FEES (back to top) 

• The non-refundable application fee is $20 (this can be waived if this fee is a hardship).
• Fellows receive free tuition, room, & board, which covers breakfasts and lunches and two shared on-campus dinners. They are responsible for their travel and four dinners off-campus.
• Scholars receive free tuition. They are responsible for room & board ($700), which covers breakfasts and lunches and two shared on-campus dinners,  and for their travel, and four dinners off-campus.
• Contributors are responsible for tuition ($800), room & board ($700), which covers breakfasts and lunches and two shared on-campus dinners, travel, and four dinners off-campus.
• Thanks to an anonymous donor, up to $5,000 of need-based funds will be available for accepted participants through The Miles and Mimi Coon Scholarship Fund. The individual amounts will be based on how many accepted participants apply for funding.

• Dayenu Cohort: Fee includes a pass to all public events, communal on-campus Shabbat dinner, and generative workshops: Tutition TBD
  • Sliding scale available if this is a hardship.
• If you will not be applying to join us on-campus, or signing up for the Dayenu Cohort, and are only interested in attending the public conference events, an in-person pass for all public events will be available for $108. 
  • Tickets for individual events, in-person and online, will also be available, with a suggested price of $18.

APPLICATION TIMELINE (back to top)

*To aid in the ease of our considerations, we ask that you apply as early as possible within the given application window. But please note that applications will not be taken before February 15.

For all applicants:
February 23-March 14, 2026: Application period is open
April 10, 2026: Notifications sent to all applicants
April 30, 2026: Registration deadline (a deposit of $108 will be due at this time. This will go toward Scholar’s room & board. It will be returned Fellows after the conference.)

*a waitlist of Scholars, Fellows, & Contributors will be created if an opportunity becomes available

APPLICATION CATEGORIES: CONTRIBUTORS, SCHOLARS, & FELLOWS (back to top)

CONTRIBUTORS

Applicants who wish to join the Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference as a Contributor should have a deep love of and commitment to poetry and interest in engaging further with its intersections with Jewish culture and tradition. As our largest contingent within the on-campus cohort, Contributors play a vital role in creating our community’s culture, as well as in supporting the conference, which is the most significant of Yetzirah’s annual programming expenses. Though we only require that Contributors have some record of publication, as well as a recommendation for previous experience attending generative creative writing workshops, the Contributors at both of our prior conferences were largely composed of accomplished writers who’d originally applied as either a Scholar or Fellow.

• • Fees: $1,500 tuition, which includes room & board (breakfasts, lunches, and two shared dinners)

SCHOLARS

Applicants who wish to join the Yetzirah Summer Conference as Scholars may have published up to one full-length collection of poetry, but no book-publication is required.

Competitive applicants will have published, since January 1, 2018, (not including self-published work) a minimum of:

• at least 20 or more individual poems or pages of poetry that appear in at least five literary journals, anthologies, or publications that regularly include poetry as a portion of their format.
  • Up to 16 pages of that poetry may be from a single volume of poetry that is fewer than 48 pages (e.g. a chapbook)

We believe people of any age can be an “emerging” poet and welcome writers who fulfill the above requirements, young and old, to apply for this fellowship.

• • Fees: $700 for room & board only (funding for Scholars covers the full $800 tuition )
  • In addition to waived tuition, each Scholar will be paired with a Conference Fellow to receive mentorship that includes a manuscript evaluation (of no more than 10 pages)

FELLOWS

Applicants who wish to join the Yetzirah Summer Conference as established poets should have published at least two full-length collections by a nationally-distributed press and have a strong record of publication.