Elana is available to lead workshops and offer keynote presentations in a variety of settings, both nationally and internationally, including: college campuses, non-profit organizations, peace building organizations, religious communities, high schools, prisons, and more. Elana can work with you to create the perfect workshop curriculum or keynote for your community. Workshops can also be combined with a reading or keynote. 

For over ten years, Elana has facilitated writing and performance workshops nationally and internationally for participants of all ages. She has offered workshops on college campuses, for educators, women in prison and throughout a spectrum of other communities.

For the past ten years, Elana has served as the writer in residence for the Bronx Academy of Letters, where she founded and developed curriculum for the Intensive Writing Workshop, a bi-weekly class in poetry and fiction for public high school students in the South Bronx.

In addition to working as a poet in the schools and developing curriculum for the Community Word Project and the DreamYard Project, Elana also headed the intergenerational oral history program at Millennium Art Academy for six years, creating multi-disciplinary performances in collaboration with senior citizens and high school students.

She also teaches internationally with Seeds of Peace, the Tent of Nations and Encounter, offering workshops to educators and community members from regions in conflict.

Recent venues include:

• Modern Montessori School (Amman, Jordan)

• Monroe Community College (Rochester, NY)

• Drisha Institute (NY, NY)

• Seeds of Peace (Maine)

Elana on Workshops:

I am amazed, each time I come into a community, at the richness and depth of what we are able to create together, especially by those who claim they are “not writers.” This is the power of creative writing—that it allows you to access parts of yourself and your story that you may not realize are right under the surface, waiting to be released. And once you see how powerful they are, you want to share them with others, and in turn hear their stories. I believe that this act—of claiming and sharing our unique stories—is a crucial part of healing our fractured world.