Literature & Writing   

OLLI students will have an opportunity to look at the prints in the Janet Turner collection at Chico State and write about them. This class is for beginning writers as well as experienced ones. Jean Varda and Joan Goodreau, authors and OLLI members, will guide students through the art-to-writing process. There will also be a print exhibition at the Turner gallery in the fall that we will be using to inspire our poems and short fiction/non-fiction.

Chico State's tradition of academic excellence goes back more than 130 years. With 1,000 faculty members and 15,500 students, the University's teaching and learning community is thriving. Discover the imagination, cutting-edge research, and expertise that flourishes in our own backyard!

Chico State's tradition of academic excellence goes back more than 130 years. With 1,000 faculty members and 15,500 students, the University's teaching and learning community is thriving. Discover the imagination, cutting-edge research, and expertise that flourishes in our own backyard!

This class will introduce students to the power of Dante’s story for life right here, right now. The Divine Comedy is not an ancient, dead text but rather is alive and well, inviting readers to pursue the examined life with a spirit of serious joy. We will explore C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed as an exercise in preparation for joining Dante’s pilgrimage. The following three classes will introduce Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso respectively.

Over the past three years, OLLI has been exploring issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These classes have provoked many questions, around which much stimulating conversation has followed. We agree that looking at unconscious racism is a self-examination that requires other voices. In this class we will read the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and use, at least in part, a study guide prepared for Oprah's Book Club. We plan to focus on how this book is and can be relevant to our daily lives.

W.B. Yeats, in his essay "The Celtic Element In Literature," spoke of visions of a world expressed by people who "believed that trees were divine, and could take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows." Once a powerful people who dominated much of Europe, the Celts were reduced to a few small groups after the Roman invasions. However, their mythology survived, thanks largely to the efforts of medieval Irish and Welsh monks who wrote down the stories.

Reading poetry helps you to know things more fully, it commands your attention, and it can sustain good conversation. In this class, participants select poetry from favorite sources to read aloud with fellow enthusiasts.

Publishing executive and Grammy-nominated record producer Rick Bleiweiss shares lessons learned in his roles as a senior executive in a publishing company and as a published author, including information and advice about publishers and publishing, literary agents, query letters, audiobooks, writing, and more.

In nine sessions we will look into events in America's journey from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century, guided by literary and artistic materials. Why do many of us know little of Black Americans' lives, nor much about Black American history? Questions we raise in this course will help answer that. Our inquiry will include asking: When did slavery start in America and when did it end? Why are monuments being targeted in protests? Do differences in skin color really matter?

Each week we will examine three or four poems, mostly from the Western tradition, some in translation from other languages. We will look at classic themes such as self-discovery, fear, compassion, insight, aging and mortality, and relationships. Our goal will be to see how the poem works and what it says to us as readers with divergent backgrounds. We will read each poem in depth and appreciation.

This class will discuss favorite science fiction authors, their books, and the human, political, and scientific issues they raise. The books and authors will be chosen by Sydney from suggestions by participants. This is a fun, free-flowing gathering of science fiction enthusiasts. Please join us and bring your ideas, insights, and suspension of disbelief.

Once again, we will try to take apart a Shakespeare play and figure out how and why it works. As You Like It is one of the most congenial of all Shakespeare offerings, with plenty of opportunities to explore its place in the culture of its time. I'll do some talking as necessary to sketch background and add context, but will try to let it function as a group discussion. No prior exposure to Shakespeare necessary.

The Writer's Workshop serves a community of writers interested in sharing their writing and responding to other writers' work. We will focus on fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, travel writing, stories for children, and other types of writing. Following a workshop format, this class will be an opportunity for students to receive feedback for their written work and provide meaningful support to fellow writers.

Learn to write a short 10- to 20-minute play. We will cover the basics of playwriting, including format, structure, character, conflict, and dialogue. This is a workshop-style class in which we discuss concepts and techniques, share what we have written, and write short exercises to develop skills. Prompts will be offered to stimulate your ideas. There will be an opportunity for some of the plays to be performed in the annual OLLI Play Festival.