Poetry, Memoir, and the Art of Remembering

Join us in the Museum at Eldridge Street's stunning Main Sanctuary for an evening with writers and former Museum at Eldridge Street staff members Rebecca Faulkner, Hanna Griff-Sleven and Amy Stein-Milford. Listen to readings from and discussions regarding their most recent works, which focus on themes that resonate with our landmark site: memory, history, sanctuary, and place.

Rebecca Faulkner: In her debut collection of poetry, Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, (Write Bloody Press, March 2023) Faulkner spans generations and timescapes – from gritty, defiant explorations of a London adolescence, to haunting poems detailing love and adulthood in the United States. Faulkner’s language and form dissects the emotional impact of historical trauma, navigating and sharply reframing nationality and memory, interiority, and history. Depictions of London during the Blitz and post-war Berlin sit alongside poems about motherhood and childhood. In this defiant debut collection, the act of writing boldly confronts a landscape dominated by patriarchal notions of the female, deftly redefining it with language and vivid imagery.

Faulkner worked at the Museum at Eldridge Street in the early years of the restoration project, during which time she programmed visual arts exhibits in the building's historic Main Sanctuary. She has an extensive background in nonprofit arts education in New York and London, and served as Deputy Director of the Anne Frank Center, and more recently, Executive Director of play:groundNYC.

Hanna Griff-Sleven: In her autoethnographic memoir, Hanna Me/Hana Mi: Sketches of My Life in Japan, Griff-Sleven documents her three years of living in Okayama, Japan in the mid 1990s. While writing about her encounters in Japan, she reflects on what her experiences as a gaijin (outsider) taught her about herself and her new countrymen. In addition to her lyrical prose, Griff-Sleven collaborated with artist Ayla Erdener who rendered stunning watercolors that not only illustrate each story but allow the reader to see into the text.

Griff-Sleven has a Ph.D In Folklore and served as the Director of Public Programs and Intern Coordinator at the Museum at Eldridge Street for over 17 years. Hanna currently teaches Oral History at the New School and conducts oral history and memoir writing workshops.

Amy Stein-Milford: In her memoir, Stories of Tormented Men, Amy Stein-Milford, excavates discarded family documents and stories as a way of holding onto her father as he is fading from Alzheimer’s. But as she digs into her Orthodox Jewish roots, memories of her own intellectual and sexual explorations surface, and she discovers the story she is writing is not the one she had intended to tell. In haunting and humorous prose, Stein-Milford writes of the relics that we collect, the legacies we leave behind, and the new growth that comes out of loss.

As longtime Deputy Director of the Museum at Eldridge Street, Stein-Milford played a leading role in the rescue and revitalization of the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue. She is currently the Director of Onsite and Special Programs at DOROT, and has written and presented extensively on Jewish memory and history for publications, exhibitions, and cultural organizations.

This program will take place in-person in the Museum at Eldridge Street's Main Sanctuary.

Image Credit: Main Sanctuary, Peter Aaron.

Below from left to right: Rebecca Faulkner, Hanna Griff-Sleven, Amy Stein-Milford.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Museum at Eldridge Street, 12 Eldridge Street, New York, United States