Sunday, October 4, 2026 | 4:00–5:30 p.m.
Tuesday, October 6, 2026 | 2:30–4:00 p.m.
at The Leiber Collection
                                                                                                                                                                     Tuesday, October 6 | 4:30–5:30 p.m.                                                  Cocktail Reception and Celebration at a Residence in Amagansett

What stories do we carry, and what happens when we finally give them form?

This October, poet Harriet Shenkman, author of Wonder Wheel, brings an intimate two-session experience of poetry, memory, and collage to The Leiber Collection, culminating in a cocktail reception and celebration at her Amagansett home.

Part literary salon, part creative atelier, and ultimately a celebration, Wonder Wheel invites participants to explore personal memory and family history through words and images, transforming fragments of the past into something tangible, meaningful, and beautiful.

Shenkman’s poems move through memory and loss, family and inheritance, illuminating lives lost to the Holocaust and the generations who have lived in its long shadow. As poet Suzanne Cleary writes, “Each of Shenkman’s vivid poems cast a spell,” conjuring those lives with tenderness and extraordinary immediacy.

The word spell feels particularly apt.

In Wonder Wheel, food, family stories, remembered places, and fragments of the past become talismans. A recipe for borscht becomes a way to reckon with hunger. Memory becomes material. Ordinary details acquire the shimmer of something precious.

The experience resonates particularly strongly at The Leiber Collection, where the life and work of Judith Leiber are at the heart of the museum. Born in Budapest, Leiber survived the Holocaust and went on to build an extraordinary life and career defined by resilience, reinvention, craftsmanship, and beauty.

Judith Leiber had a remarkable ability to transform the familiar into the extraordinary. Everyday objects became jeweled works of art; craftsmanship became a form of expression; and beauty became a language of transformation.

It is in that spirit that Wonder Wheel unfolds.

THE EXPERIENCE

Across two intimate sessions, participants will be invited to look inward, to memories, family histories, moments of joy and loss, remembered places, and the stories waiting to be told.

SESSION ONE: MEMORY INTO WORDS

Sunday, October 4 | 4:00–5:30 p.m.
at The Leiber Collection

Shenkman will begin with readings from Wonder Wheel, opening a conversation about memory, experience, and the stories that shape us. Participants will then be invited to share selected life experiences and begin drafting their own poems, guided by Shenkman’s thoughtful approach to the alchemy of memory and language.

No previous poetry experience is necessary.

SESSION TWO: WORDS INTO ART

Tuesday, October 6 | 2:30–4:00 p.m.
at The Leiber Collection

The second gathering moves from the written word to the visual. Participants will share their poems, then transform them through collage, layering images, texture, and text to create a finished work that is entirely their own.

The process explores how memory can be reassembled, how fragments, images, words, and associations can come together to tell a story in an entirely new way.

COCKTAIL RECEPTION & CELEBRATION

Tuesday, October 6 | 4:30–5:30 p.m.
at a residence in Amagansett

The experience culminates in an intimate cocktail reception at an Amagansett residence. Participants will gather to celebrate the poems and artwork they have created, continuing the afternoon’s conversation over cocktails.

It is a fitting conclusion to an experience centered on memory, storytelling, creativity, and the pleasure of gathering.

THE ART OF REMEMBERING

There is something inherently precious about being given the time and space to remember.

Wonder Wheel offers precisely that: an opportunity to step away from the noise and consider the stories that have shaped us, to put them into words, to see them anew, and ultimately to make something from what we carry.

For Judith Leiber, beauty was never merely decorative. It was a language of transformation, an extraordinary response to an extraordinary life. Wonder Wheel continues that conversation through another kind of making, bringing together the intimacy of poetry, the tactile language of collage, and the enduring power of personal history.

The result is more than a workshop.

It is a salon.
A conversation.
A creative ritual.
A celebration of memory and of the art of making something beautiful from what we carry.

WONDER WHEEL

With Poet Harriet Shenkman
Poetry • Memory • Collage • Conversation

Tickets: $55                                                                                                                                                    Cocktail Reception: address will be provided during the workshop.