Workshops, Readings, Talks

I've been offering workshops, readings, keynote addresses, performance, and specialized classes for over 25 years around the U.S. and Mexico at various venues and communities.

Keynotes: My keynote presentations for businesses, organizations, conferences and festivals, tailored to the needs of your project, focus on topics such as creativity resilience, breakthrough thinking through the arts, writing as a way of knowing, community-building and self-care through writing, doing the work you love, or what it means to find and live our truest stories. Additionally, singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt and I do collaborative performances featuring our co-written songs and my poetry.

Workshops: My workshops help people of many backgrounds discover greater meaning, connection, and joy through writing in community. Workshop specialities include legacy and vision, making life transitions, living with serious illness, right livelihood and your life's work, and writing as an ecological, mythological, and embodied practice. I customize workshops for each group, community, or event; workshops may be followed by solo or collaborative readings. 

Readings & Talks: I love giving readings of my poetry and prose (including improvisational poetry). I've presented hundreds of readings and talks at conferences, colleges, and events, including opening for singer-songwriter Dar Williams and performing with dancers, musicians, and other artists. Special readings and talks include:

• Writing the Tree of Life: Midrash to Re-vision Our Lives - a keynote presentation and/or workshop drawing from the Hebrew tradition of Midrash, re-interpreting and re-visioning our guiding myths and messages to foster greater meaning, freedom, and authenticity. I also do readings from my literary Midrash, the novel Miriam's Well and my poetry and in and beyond my book, Lot's Wife.
• Chasing Weather — a virtual storm chase through poetry, stories, videos, and photographs with Stephen Locke based on Stephen & Caryn’s book, Chasing Weather: Tornadoes, Tempests, and Thunderous Skies in Word and Image. 
  

  

• The Holocaust and Polish Resistance — a multi-media presentation based on my book Needle in the Bone: How a Holocaust Survivor and Polish Resistance Fighter Beat the Odds and Found Each Other.

I'm also roving scholar with Humanities Kansas's Speaker's Bureau and TALK (Talk About Literature in Kansas) program and available as a touring artist in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas through the Mid-America Arts Alliance's Touring Artist Program.

If you'd like to connect with me about the possibilities, please email me.