Since its inception in 1970, Poets & Writers has provided fees to writers who give readings or conduct writing workshops. Each year, our Readings/Workshops program supports hundreds of writers participating in events in large cities and small towns throughout New York and California, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Tucson, and Washington D.C.
Seniors Writing Workshop
A documentary look at a writing workshop for seniors, which Poets & Writers has funded for ten years. The workshop takes place at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in New York City and some of the writers have participated continuously since 2001.
Each year, through its Readings/Workshops Program, Poets & Writers supports hundreds of writers participating in literary events. If you're interested in attending any of the readings or workshops listed in the calendar, please be sure to get in touch with the contact person to confirm time and place.
Each year, Poets & Writers holds an Intergenerational Reading, "Connecting Generations," where seniors and teens from P&W-supported writing workshops in New York City come together to read their work. In June 2009, P&W held our 8th Annual Intergenerational Reading at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore near Lincoln Center.
Additional support is provided by the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.
Social justice activist and Cave Canem fellow Ama Codjoe blogs about participating in a P&W–supported Cave Canem regional workshop with formalist poet Marilyn Nelson in 2009.
Poets & Writers is committed to making literature available to the widest possible public, including audiences that rarely have access to literary events. Learn more about the special projects we support that bring readings and workshops to prisons, clinics, homeless shelters, settlement homes, and more.
“The first bright day after several rainy ones, the kind of yellow loveliness that comes only after a lot of gray days. So why were there 32 people sitting in a circle in the library meeting room with notepads on their laps and eager looks on their faces?... I thought for sure most of those who signed up would change their minds at the last minute and go to the beach instead…. The workshop participants wrote about memory and the loss of it; two wrote of the death of their spouse…. When do we gather together to take the conversation beneath the surface of things and say what’s true and find music in the saying? Not often enough. That’s why, I think, they came even though the day outside was lovely.”
– Poet Patrice Vecchione after a workshop at the Monterey Public Library in Monterey, California
Cowboy poet Larry Maurice performs at an event hosted by the Friends of the Amador County Library in Sutter Creek, California on January 16, 2011.
Credit:
Amy B. Raff
Workshop leader Nancy Kline (front, center) with workshop participants at the Woodstock Public Library District in Woodstock, New York, December 2010.
Credit:
Li Yun Alvarado
Poets Linda Gregerson and Rowan Ricardo Phillips at the Poets Out Loud Reading, at Fordham University in New York City on January 24, 2011.
Credit:
John Dahl
Poet Drew Dellinger (left) and project director Terri Glass at a California Poets in the Schools reading, which took place October 5, 2010, in Mill Valley, California.
