Poetry
April 20-24, 2026
Tiered Tuition
$250-$600 Reserve My Spot
April 20th-24th at 12pm-2pm (Eastern)
What is tender about Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and how can we, as readers and writers, mine the domestic sphere to uncover our own proverbial tender buttons? This generative workshop will be structured around close reading of Stein’s 1914 experimental collection of prose poems, with writing prompts drawn from and inspired by the book’s sections on “Objects” “Food” and “Rooms.” Together, we’ll discuss how Stein reclaims and repurposes the language of daily domesticity in poems like “A Chair,” “Chicken,” and “Cream,” and to what end. We’ll focus in particular on the relationship between gender and genre in works that seem to defy any neat categorizations, and consider how we can put Stein’s radically inventive and humorous techniques to work in our 21st century milieu.
Shoshana Olidort 
is a critic, writer, and translator. A scholar of modern and contemporary Jewish women's poetry across English, Hebrew, and Yiddish, Shoshana's work engages with questions of identity formation in literature and the arts. Her poetry, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Poetry Northwest, Cortland Review, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She has taught at Stanford University and Amherst College, and in informal settings around the country. As well, she has been an editor for the Poetry Foundation. She lives in the Philadelphia area with her family.
