Literature   

• Book Club - Fall 2026 

• ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent the Friday before each class session begins.

  1st session: Monday, September 28

  2nd session: Monday, October 26

  3rd session: Monday, November 23

  Using prepared questions and our own observations, the discussion each month will explore a book selected by book club members.
  Selected books for the Fall 2026 term are:

  September    Small Things Like These  by Claire Keegan
  Published 2021    118 pages     Fiction
  Small Things Like These is a critically acclaimed novella by Irish author Claire Keegan. Set in 1985 Ireland, the book is about a coal merchant named Bill Furlong, who confronts the Catholic Church's control and a dark secret at a local convent during the Christmas season, forcing him to make a difficult moral choice. Praised for its precise prose and emotional depth, the book won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, exploring themes of courage, love, and complicity. It was also adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy.

  October        Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America  by Beth Macy 
  Published 2025    368 pages    Nonfiction 
  Paper Girl is a memoir exploring the decline of Macy’s Ohio hometown, Urbana, due to economic hardship, the opioid crisis, and political polarization, contrasting it with her own escape through education and journalism. The book blends personal narrative with investigative reporting to examine issues like the mental health crisis, misinformation, and the hollowing out of the middle class, questioning if a similar path out is possible for today's youth. 

  November     The Correspondent: A Novel  by Virginia Evans
  Published in 2025    304 pages    Fiction
  The Correspondent is a 2025 debut epistolary novel that tells the life story of Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in her seventies, through her letters and emails. The book explores themes of aging, forgiveness, and memory as Sybil writes to friends, family, and even strangers, while confronting a painful event from her past. It has been praised as a moving and witty story with a memorable, cantankerous protagonist, and is recommended for fans of literary fiction and epistolary novels.

  Please read Small Things Like These before the first class. 
  The facilitator will send a list of discussion questions for each book to all registrants prior to each Book Club session. 
  Debie White has been a member of the Elderwise Book Club for 10 plus years. She is an avid reader and welcomes an exchange of ideas, opinions, and interpretations.

  

  

  

• Fee: $60.00

• Instructor(s): Debie White

• Dates: 9/28/2026 - 11/23/2026

  Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

• Sessions: 3

  Days: M

• Building: Online Course

  Room: Online via Zoom

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• Relocation Readings: Immigration in Classic and Contemporary Literature 

• ONLINE: A Zoom invitation link will be sent the Friday before each class session begins.

  Moving to a new country with an unfamiliar culture has been the subject of many novels both past and present. Participants in this class will read and discuss two such works. Week one will be devoted to Harry Leon Wilson’s Ruggles of Red Gap (1915), a satire-filled tale of British servant Ruggles’ assimilation from aristocratic societal norms to the freewheeling American Northwest. The second week will focus on Emanuela Anechoum’s Tangerinn, an Italian novel whose English translation was published in 2026. Tangerinn is a contemporary tale of a young woman’s migration from Southern Italy to England and how it is impacted by the death of her father, who had also left his homeland. Class registrants should read each novel prior to its class session. Cecilia Donohue enjoyed a 25-year career of undergraduate instruction, graduate teaching, and academic administration. Currently serving as an Associate Editor of The Steinbeck Review. Cecilia has written extensively on America’s southern writers, notably Robert Penn Warren and Anne Tyler. She now resides in East Tennessee with her husband Bill and their trio of equine, feline, and canine companions.

  

  

• Fee: $40.00

• Instructor(s): Cecilia Donohue

• Dates: 10/5/2026 - 10/12/2026

  Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Sessions: 2

  Days: M

• Building: Online Course

  Room: Online via Zoom

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• Poems Without Borders 

• IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road

  We will read and discuss poems from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, a collection of 300 short and accessible poems whose brevity belies their force. The editor, Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, selected each poem for its ability to communicate intense human experiences through vivid imagery. We will sample poems from several intriguing categories, including The Secret of a Thing, People Among People, Travel, The Moment, and Woman’s Skin. In our open-ended discussion of each poem, we will enjoy sharing various interpretations of these small masterpieces. Harcourt Brace & Company.1996. ISBN 0-15-600574 (pb). Copies of the poems will be emailed to participants a few days prior to the class. Leonore Gerstein was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and spent many of her formative years in Israel, first at a kibbutz, and then in Jerusalem, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy. Leonore is passionate about poetry and is always eager to explore a variety of works with veteran and new Elderwise members.

  

• Fee: $20.00

• Instructor(s): Leonore Gerstein

• Dates: 10/7/2026 - 10/7/2026

  Times: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

• Sessions: 1

  Days: W

• Building: 2275 Platt Road

  Room: Classroom

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• Louise Erdrich: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse 

• IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom, 2275 Platt Road

  Published in 2001, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse is Louise Erdrich’s eighth novel. Set on a remote Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota and covering several decades, the story brings together three of the author’s most memorable characters: Father Damien Modeste, Sister Leopolda, and Nanapush. Thematically, identity and belonging, belief and faith, and community and isolation are explored in this narrative in richly complex ways. Our two sessions will focus generally on the author’s life and specifically on the novel. Class registrants should read the novel prior to class. Kevin Eyster is a professor emeritus at Madonna University in Livonia where he continues to teach courses in literature. He has been presenting at Elderwise Learning for over 25 years. Along with spending time with family, he enjoys swimming, bike riding, reading, and following one of his alma mater’s sports teams.

  

  

• Fee: $40.00

• Instructor(s): Kevin Eyster

• Dates: 10/22/2026 - 10/29/2026

  Times: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

• Sessions: 2

  Days: Th

• Building: 2275 Platt Road

  Room: Classroom

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