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   About    

I love teaching creative writing!  I love seeing students produce work and succeed in their writing. Through a wide variety of prompts that include music, poetry, memoir, and more, everyone can tap into their creative side and write.  We all have it inside of us.  I give ways to improve the writing, along with suggestions of books or articles to read.  I also love coaching - helping writers complete a project. 

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   My Story   

My book of poems about the Holocaust and my family, How To Spot One Of Us (2007), received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, famed historian Sir Martin Gilbert, and renowned rabbis Harold Kushner and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, (Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), as well as renowned poets Mary Stewart Hammond, Yerra Sugarman, and Jeanne Marie Beaumont. My forthcoming poetry book, Seduction: Out of Eden, co-authored with Jaclyn Piudik, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2022.

 

I am currently producing AFTER: Bringing the Dead Back to Life, a cinematic feature-length documentary in which contemporary poets perform and discuss the responsibility of artists to respond to the Holocaust. (See the AFTER: A Poetry Film page)

 

An award-winning poet, I received a Certificate of Appreciation from the 261st Signal Brigade for my work in a Multi-National Forces Days of Remembrance Holocaust Memorial Service held at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, for which I also received a Citation from The Council of The City of New York. I recently received Honorable Mention for my poem, "The Poet Receives a Toolbox" from the Connecticut Poetry Society.

 

A Pushcart Prize nominee, my work has appeared in journals including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Kalliope, Mudfish, Common Ground Review, and in several online journals and anthologies, including The Poet’s Quest for God. My featured essays include “Make Your Selection, Please,” for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), and “Kristallnacht: How Will We Remember?” for The New York Jewish Week, and "Sometimes You Have to Walk Through the Door, Even If There is Blood on It" for The Wisdom Daily. Several poems have been translated into Russian, and I have given bilingual readings with a Russian-speaking poet at The New York City Public Library. My chapter, "At the Water’s Edge: Poetry and the Holocaust" appears in The Handbook of Psychoanalytic Holocaust Studies (Routledge, 2019).

Speaking frequently, I most recently appeared most recently at a Six-Word Memoir storytelling event at the Tenement Museum in New York City. I've also spoken at "German-Speaking Jews and Their Lasting Impact on New York City", co-sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute and The Jewish Studies Center at Baruch College. I've taught and given readings at a variety of locales including Fairleigh Dickinson University, the Westover School, Yeshiva University, ADL/Hidden Child Foundation, the Association of Jewish Family & Children’s Agencies, the JCC in Manhattan and Washington D.C., the YMCA, Hadassah, Left Bank Books, Bowery Poetry Club, KGB Bar, and Cornelia Street Café. I'm a recipient of a Drisha Institute for Jewish Education Arts Fellowship in Biblical Hebrew Grammar.

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