Cole Krawitz (he/him/his) brings 25 years of community organizing, transformational leadership coaching, social change communications, and creative arts to his experience as a spiritually-rooted certified transformational coach, facilitator, poet, singer and direct action organizer.
He is a 45-year-old doykait believer, a teenage cancer survivor living with the long term impacts of treatment and chronic illness, a gratitude practitioner, a trans, queer, white Ashkenazi Jewish ritual leader, a caring uncle, an award-winning writer and poet, and leadership coach who for over twenty years has been working across liberation and social justice movements for freedom and dignity for everyone.
As a writer, Cole has been awarded poetry residencies and fellowships from Summer Literary Seminars, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), Lambda Literary Foundation, and Makor/92nd Street Y. He’s been a Lecturer in Creative Writing in the Master of Arts in English Program at Holy Names University and in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program at University of California, Berkeley. Cole’s writing and translations have been published in Troubling the Line: Trans & Genderqueer Poetry & Poetics, Tidal Basin Review, Zeek, The Forward, NewsDay, The Advocate, and more. He’s also performed his work throughout the Bay Area at Lit Crawl, Museum of Performance & Design, San Francisco Public Library, Bay Area Poetry Marathon, SOMArts Cultural Center, and the National Queer Arts Festival.
He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Poetry, from Lesley University’s low-residency program and a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Smith College. Cole was also a Jewish Community Fellow at the Graduate Theological Union in 2019-2020. He lives on Lisjan Ohlone land and is a monthly contributor to the Shuumi Land Tax to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
Cole is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, leads and facilitates Jewish ritual offerings and was recently selected to be a participant on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. You’ll often find Cole singing, ambling amidst the redwoods, rose gardens and flowering neighborhood blocks, and embracing the joy of Shabbat.
