Honoring Refugee and Immigrant Voices through Poetry, Storytelling and Visual Art A Workshop with Merna Hecht
November 1st, 2026
4:00pm-6:00 PM Pacific
Tuition: $30 or Pay What You are Able To
Workshop Description
In this experiential workshop Merna Hecht will share stories from her many years of working with immigrant and refugee youth and highlight the resilience, strength and deep humanity that issues from the poems and visual art they create to tell their own stories in their own voices. Speaking to both the anguish and trauma of forced migration and the complex reasons that are root causes, she will also emphasize the particular and distinctive flavors and intimate details of landscape, people, language and place-bound culture that thousands of people of all ages are forced to leave. Her presentation will include a very brief overview of the dramatic changes in current U.S. refugee and immigration policies and the harmful narratives that accompany them. Bring your pen and paper because Merna will offer poems and prompts that invite all who attend to “put their hearts on the page” and explore their own sense of home and their reflections on gestures of welcome and community engagement on behalf of refugees and immigrants.
About the Artist
Merna Ann Hecht is a well- known storyteller, a NSN Brimstone Award recipient, a teaching artist, poet, and longtime human rights activist. In 2009, she founded the Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project at Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington, one of the most culturally diverse schools in the U.S. The project has received national recognition for creating a broader public awareness of refugee and immigrant stories through presentations, exhibition and the publication of anthologies featuring her students’ poetry and artwork. She continues similar projects through Word Travels: Bringing Refugee and Immigrant Voices to the Community. Merna is also a passionate cook and baker and a dedicated organic gardener who works to promote food justice through collaborative endeavors with refugee women chefs and the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots program. A longtime resident of Vashon Island, WA, Merna was the 2017-19 Vashon Poet Laureate. She lives with her husband on a small organic blueberry farm.
https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/no-one-knows-you-until-they-hear-your-story/