REIMAGINING: Rewriting the Will: A Workshop with David Mills

Van Cortlandt Park Alliance presents a writing workshop led by poet and Bronx byproduct David Mills. Drawing inspiration from a historic Van Cortlandt family will, participants will engage in a powerful exercise: imagining and crafting their own “new will” from the perspective of an individual enslaved on the Van Cortlandt plantation.

Together, participants will reflect on questions of legacy and power, naming both material and immaterial possessions, from tools and objects to emotions, dreams, and memories. This act of imaginative resistance reclaims voice and agency, transforming historical silence into testament.

Please bring your favorite pen/pencil and notebook with you!

Space is limited.  RSVP Required.

The workshop will be held in the Van Cortlandt House Museum in a space that is only accessible by stairs.

About David Mills: David Mills holds an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College and an M.A. from New York University in creative writing. He’s published four collections: Boneyarn (New York slavery poems), After Mistic (Massachusetts slavery poems), The Sudden Country and The Dream Detective. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Fence, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat, Callaloo, Brooklyn Rail, and Obsidian.

REIMAGINING: Rewriting the Will is part of Van Cortlandt Park Alliance’s Reimagining initiative. In partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space and Immanuel Oni, Liminal Sp, VCPA invites the community to reimagine the park’s Enslaved African Burial Ground site as a memorial space that fosters long-term healing and restoration. This project is supported by the Mellon Foundation.