Eve Rifkah was co-founder of Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. Founder, and editor DINER, a literary magazine with a 7-year run. She is the 2021 recipient of the Stanley Kunitz award.

She has run an ongoing writing workshop for 15 years and teaches workshops and classes at WISE (Worcester Institute for Senior Education). She lives in Worcester, MA with her husband, musician, artist, writer Michael Milligan and their cat.

Contact Rifkah to schedule performances. Performances based on Outcasts the Penikese Island Leper Hospital 1904-1921, are accompanied with a PowerPoint presentation including photos of some of the inhabitants and scenes of the island. Performances based on Dear Suzanne are accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation including, Valadon’s art, art with her as model and photographs.

The reading is done in 2 voices with Josette Kaplan performing the role of Valadon and RIfkah as herself.

Rifkah is available to facilitate workshops for all ages. She also will do private editing and aid with compiling manuscripts.


Kunitz Award:

Worcester, Mass., poet, editor, and teacher Eve Rifkah has been chosen to receive the 2021 Stanley Kunitz Medal awarded through a bequest from two-time Poet Laureate of The United States and Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Worcester native Stanley Kunitz. The medal, awarded annually since 2015, is the seventh awarded to a person with a strong Worcester County (Mass.) connection who best exemplifies Stanley Kunitz’s (born in Worcester in 1905) life-long commitment to poetry and poets.  The award recognizes the total commitment to poetry as Kunitz lived it:  Teaching poetry, mentoring poets, speaking poetry, publishing poetry, and supporting organizations which nurture poetry.

Poet and publisher of Tupelo Press Jeffrey Levine said of Rifkah’s poetry in Dear Suzanne, “[She] achieves what may be one of the contemporary artist’s most difficult purposes—to deliver moments of affirmation amid a tide of loss.  In the doing, her lines come to us both in time and out of time, as with a nod to Virginia Wolf….”

A play based on Outcasts the Penikese Island Leper Hospital 1905-1921 
written by Scott Barrow – titled Outcasts the Lepers of Penikese Island,
was performed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on November, 2022.