Writing the Biblical Persona: Doubt, Devotion & Courage

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.

Avia Tadmor is the author of the debut poetry collection Song in Tammuz, winner of the Tupelo Press International Berkshire Prize (forthcoming October 2026). Her poems appear in Best New Poets, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, the New Republic, New England Review, and elsewhere. Avia’s poetry has received scholarships and awards from Yaddo, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Adroit Journal’s Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program.

Avia has taught writing at Columbia University, where she directed the Columbia Artist/Teachers program, promoting no-cost arts education in schools and community organizations in NYC. Currently, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University. 

A graduate of the United World College program educating for constructive dialogue, peace, and a sustainable future, Avia holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Harvard University.  Born in Jerusalem, she lives in New York. 

*Ticket Price: As we want our events to be accessible to all, our tickets are offered free of charge. Yet if you're able to donate—perhaps $18, or some multiple of 18, which in Jewish tradition signifies wishing long life and good luck to the recipient of the gift—all proceeds will go directly to supporting Yetzirah, making more events like this possible.

** If this fee is a hardship, Yetzirah offers a pay-what-you-can option for workshop participation. 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. 

Yetzirah is a nonprofit organization, and any gift you make is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law.