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!
Submission Sundays is a free service to members of HVWC. Space is limited so please reserve your spot. This group will meet online via Zoom. The host will email the Zoom link in the day leading up to the event. Please email [email protected] with any questions. One Sunday a month, 12:30-2:30 pm. Join host M.A. Scott for two hours […]
Jean Valentine (1934–2020) was/is one of the great contemporary US poets. Intensely concise and mysterious yet never overly abstract nor austere in the sense of emotionally withholding, Valentine’s work continues to influence—and more importantly, to move readers and writers deeply. In this generative workshop, we’ll read and discuss and write in response to the entirety […]
Whether in memoir, guides, or fiction, travel literature has long preserved colonialist attitudes toward people and place. As contemporary writers and world storytellers who have inherited this tradition, we carry a responsibility to challenge the colonizer within in order to present our work in more just ways. In this four-hour course, travel writer and lecturer […]
Mondays 7—9 PM on Zoom, October 2, 16, 23, and 30 This four-week class is focused on learning new skills and capacities to revise your work. We will look closely at poets’ early drafts, revisions, and final poems. Revision literally means to “re-see.” We can never revise our lives, but revision opens the possibility to […]
Learn to play D&D while you go on a fantastical storytelling adventure! Oh, and have some mead along the way. Cast Party presents: Dungeon Master Andy guiding you through a 2-part D&D 5e learning, storytelling, and mead tasting event: Zero to Hero. Adults only (21 and over). Perfect for a date night out. Six seats […]
Somatic meditation views the body as the fundamental arena of meditation practice. Through specific practices, we observe how the body’s wisdom can serve as a guide in our everyday lives. In this regular group gathering, we’ll explore the view of somatic practice, practice meditation together, and discuss our experiences. This group will be facilitated by Paul […]
Despite being the first words a reader (or editor) sees as they decide whether or not to read further, many writers spend less time considering their titles than other language that composes a text. And yet, a title can create context, establish tone, announce formal concerns, establish dramatic tension or misdirection; in a manuscript, titles […]
Metaphors are often thought of as the domain of poets, a rarefied and purely linguistic trope. But metaphors are everywhere – when we have meetings coming up, when you find yourself in an argument, when you (hopefully!) grasp what it is I mean. And not just in language; linguistic metaphors emerge from our thinking and […]
Join Jennifer Franklin as she welcomes acclaimed poets and translators, Rachel Hadas, Patrick James Errington, & Walter Ancarrow for a celebration of their new poetry collections. NB: This reading will take place in person at HVWC. Rachel Hadas is the recently retired Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University—Newark. She is the author […]
Find Your Courage to Create the Art and Work you Love 3-hour Interactive Workshop for Artists & Creatives IN PERSON at the Hudson Valley Writers Center For Artists and Creatives ready to tame their fears and change the trajectory of their lives! Open to the possibilities available to you when you tame your fears. […]
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 […]
Rainer Maria Rilke is probably the most widely-read German-language poet, and yet his poems present challenges to readers. This two-hour class will be a primer on how to approach his work generally. More specifically, we will look at The Duino Elegies, their framing devices, the themes of the work, and the strange, posthumous voice the […]
Learn to play D&D while you go on a fantastical storytelling adventure! Oh, and have some mead along the way. Cast Party presents: Dungeon Master Andy guiding you through a 2-part D&D 5e learning, storytelling, and mead tasting event: Zero to Hero. Adults only (21 and over). Perfect for a date night out. Six seats […]
Somatic meditation views the body as the fundamental arena of meditation practice. Through specific practices, we observe how the body’s wisdom can serve as a guide in our everyday lives. In this regular group gathering, we’ll explore the view of somatic practice, practice meditation together, and discuss our experiences. This group will be facilitated by Paul […]
What remains unresolved in your life and in your writing? Using anchor poems about war and internal conflict, we will write about what troubles and unsettles us, developing our own unique voices along the way. In this generative workshop, we will explore the ways in which poetry can provide a battleground for working out the […]
Please join us for our warm and welcoming Open Write Nights, recurring monthly on the Second Saturday of each month. For the month of October, Open Write will take place on Zoom only. Participants will get Zoom login instructions via email at the time of registration. (Please check spam filters.) Your hosts Michelle Thomas and Cassie Cartaginese will […]
How do you write a whole story in a compact space, under 1000/750/500/250 words? Regardless of the number, the goal is to create a complete narrative. In this workshop, we'll examine flash memoir and learn how to write brief, descriptive, thought-provoking prose in response to prompts. Some of the writers discussed will be Ron Riekki, […]
The generative constraint is a mainstay of poetry workshops and praxis. A ‘good’ constraint—one that works for you right now—is (paradoxically!) freeing. If a constraint feels like an itchy sweater, strip it off and toss it to someone else! In this generative workshop, we will briefly explore familiar generative constraints such as subject matter (write […]
We’re happy to present another installment in this writing series for teens! Returning students are welcomed back for new prompts and new discussion. New students are encouraged to join Tina’s fun and engaging classes at any time. Do you love to write fiction? Would you like to generate new work week after week? Would it […]
Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Lang lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs Israel Writers Studio. Her essays have appeared in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Under the Sun, Ascent, Consequence, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays nominee, she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and […]
“The first time I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining.” My father was pleased with the opening of his story, Montraldo. “That should hook the bottom feeders,” he told me with a bravado that was in no way characteristic. Sometimes as in the case of Look Homeward Angel—or anything else by Thomas Wolfe—there are practice swings before wood hits […]
Please join us in partnership with WordShedNYC Reading Series, an all-inclusive interdisciplinary community culturally and creatively integrated that combines art forms while interlocking ideas. We are thrilled to feature Judith Rose, Litany Burns, and Samuel Harps on Thursday, October 19 at 7 pm at the Hudson Valley Writers Center (in person). Judith remains curious. She writes, […]
Somatic meditation views the body as the fundamental arena of meditation practice. Through specific practices, we observe how the body’s wisdom can serve as a guide in our everyday lives. In this regular group gathering, we’ll explore the view of somatic practice, practice meditation together, and discuss our experiences. This group will be facilitated by Paul […]
We are excited to hold Open Mic Night in hybrid form, both in-person at HVWC and virtually! Physical and virtual doors open at 7:20 pm for event starting at 7:30 pm. Due to popular demand to participate, we’ve had to limit the amount of readers to 20. All performers, whether “in person” or on Zoom, […]
In this generative class on Haibun we will learn and discuss the elements of the modern Haibun, read classic and contemporary Haibun by Basho, Issa, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Maureen Seaton, and write our own Haibun. NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and capped at 15. Link will be sent to email you use to register at […]
Storyteller David Neilsen will perform a retelling of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This will be a fun, family event, featuring additional Halloween treats and activities for our guests. Join us for a memorable experience to celebrate Halloween season in Sleepy Hollow! This event will take place indoors at HVWC. Forty seats total will […]
Storyteller David Neilsen will perform a retelling of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This will be a fun, family event, featuring additional Halloween treats and activities for our guests. Join us for a memorable experience to celebrate Halloween season in Sleepy Hollow! This event will take place indoors at HVWC. Forty seats total will […]
What makes a poem memorable? Dave Smith says it’s “... a confident use of language which releases feeling and keeps releasing it with repeated readings.” Naomi Shihab Nye says for her it is, “Love and care for elemental details... and a way of ending that leaves a new resonance or a lit spark in the […]
WHAT’S LANDSCAPE GOT TO DO WITH IT? Setting can do a lot of the heavy lifting in any story. How your characters interact with place or other characters in a given landscape, coupled with how you choose to describe it, can suggest more about what is happening in a story or scene than straight telling. […]
Learn how to write the comtemporary Amrtican sonnet with Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets. NB: This class will be taught in person at HVWC before Oliver reads for us. It is capped at 12 students. Please sign up ASAP as we expect it to sell out. Oliver de la Paz is […]
Join Program Director, Jennifer Franklin, as she welcomes Oliver de la Paz, Michael Dumanis, and Margaret Ray to read and engage in a conversation about craft and their new collections. NB: This reading will take place in person at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. Please reserve your spot when you know that you will be […]
Somatic meditation views the body as the fundamental arena of meditation practice. Through specific practices, we observe how the body’s wisdom can serve as a guide in our everyday lives. In this regular group gathering, we’ll explore the view of somatic practice, practice meditation together, and discuss our experiences. This group will be facilitated by Paul […]
The ekphrastic poem—one provoked by or in response a work of art—is a form that holds rich interior and surface tensions, deriving energy from the friction between two mediums and modes of experience: the visual and the verbal. As such, it can be a vibrant site of experimentation and play, liminality and subversion. How does […]
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” –Mary Oliver This class will support participants in developing a practice of multi-sensory external and internal observation in order to write with awareness, power, and precision across genres. In a four-hour class, we’ll talk about creative observation as a skill and a practice, read short […]
This workshop focuses on the art of editing, and offers techniques that help writers re-enter that old friend, the poem that’s almost finished, with renewed creative energy. The one you’ve read and reread, and tweaked and put in the drawer. Each poet can bring in any poem they wish, even a new one. Bring in a piece (up […]
This will be a three-hour poetry workshop with Karen Finley. More information will be posted as we have it. Please email [email protected] with any questions. NB: This class will be taught on Zoom. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your […]
Join SHP co-editors and SHP Advisory Committee as they welcome eight debut poets. Jared Beloff, Andrew Collard, India Lena González, Nicholas Goodly, Safia Jama, Judy Katz, Stephanie Laterza, & Hila Ratzabi will read from their most recent poetry collections. NB: This reading will take place on Zoom. The link will be sent to the email […]
Working with our attention on the sound of our words returns a spirit of play and discovery to our writing. Even while writing free verse, we can call on a range of musical techniques to both enrich our poems and help us access content that we are not yet conscious of. In this workshop, we […]
In this course, we will play with different ways of entering a poem, focusing on forms of poetry that mobilize external sources to create something new: erasures, centos, and ekphrastic writing. Chance will be our guide. We will let go of "likes" and "dislikes" when it comes to sources, and practice making poetry out of […]