The Amherst Writers and Artists AWA Method - A Generative Workshop with Poet Sharon Israel - 21 April 2025

“Always make room for that singing thing inside you” 

- Sharon Israel, Voice Lesson

ROXBURY — Writers in the Mountains (WIM) presents The Amherst Method, a generative writing workshop with poet Sharon Israel, the last Friday of the month from 3 to 5 pm. The next session will be held on April 25. Advance registration is recommended. Bring a notebook and pen.

Never written before?  Know you have a writer’s soul but haven’t yet been able to put words to paper and reach your creative core?  Are you already a writer but need to access your authentic voice and develop your style?

Poet Sharon Israel will conduct ongoing generative workshops using the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) Method that will help you dive deep through exciting visual, musical, and tactile prompts as well as compelling word-based prompts and exercises.  Be in the moment, find the space between thought and feeling, access what may be just below the surface…  Your voice will reveal itself and your craft will grow in an environment where you can nourish what you unleash.  Receive and give positive commentary on newly created work.  Once you revise, bring your work in for further review and discussion, again in a safe and supportive environment.  This workshop will make you want to write more and more, not less and less.

Sharon Israel is certified in the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method and will incorporate the principles of the AWA into this workshop.  AWA, an international writing organization, is founded on the belief that everyone is a writer. AWA supports practiced and emerging voices through its proven workshop method.

Sharon, a Sephardic-American poet, hosts the radio show and podcast, Planet Poet-Words in Space, on WIOX 91.3 FM in the Catskills and streaming on WIOXradio.org.  She was an early recipient of Brooklyn College’s Leonard B. Hecht Poetry Explication Award, was nominated for “Best of the Net” and won Four Lines’ 2020 winter poetry challenge. Sharon’s work has most recently appeared in Flatbush Review, the Orchard Lea Press anthology Close Up: Poems on Cancer, Grief, Hope and Healing, Discretionary Love, Epistemic Literary and Dream Noir Magazine. Her chapbook Voice Lesson was published by Post Traumatic Press.  Sharon is also a member of the poetry/soundscape duo Orphic Mix with composer Robert Cucinotta. Visit Sharon's website Sharonisraelpoet.com or click on https://linktr.ee/sharonisraelpoet for more information. 

Praise for Voice Lesson

Sharon Israel’s poems are full of song and detail, movement and color; the pleasures she brings to the page are many and varied. We are as likely to find Israel’s speaker sighting owls in the Catskills or helping in her dad’s butcher shop, as in the world of music implied by the title. In Voice Lesson, Israel’s urge is alchemical, so that when she’s behind the counter, “scoop[ing] shiny brains into plastic bags,” she is also arranging them “carefully like pale jewels.” She’s after a kind of transformation and urges us, “Always make room/for that singing thing/inside you.” 

- Daisy Fried, author of Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice; My Brother is Getting Arrested Again, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and She Didn’t Mean to Do It, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize.

To register, e-mail writersinthemountains@gmail.com. To register online, visit writersinthemountains.org. The class fee is $12.

Writers in the Mountains is a 501 ( c ) (3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing. Learn more at writersinthemountains.org.