Literature & Writing   

In this class, we will look at old tales, their tellers and illustrators, and transitions from spoken to written literature. Fairy tales, a.k.a. magic tales, are very old and both stable and shapeshifting. People have enjoyed them in cartoons, Victorian nurseries, peasant huts, and even courts like Versailles. The original, oral forms of magic tales are violent, coarse, and sexually explicit. Sometimes governments, priests, or schoolmarms compelled changes. Sometimes, writers. There will be nine tellers with at least nine tales sent to class members.

This learning through conversation seminar will discuss Never Let Me Go, a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. We meet an unusual group of children in an English boarding school, and follow them into young adulthood. Ishiguro slowly reveals to us how unusual these children are. In the process we visit several fundamental issues about what it means to be human, especially in the context of contemporary medical ethics.

This learning through conversation seminar will discuss Never Let Me Go, a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. We meet an unusual group of children in an English boarding school, and follow them into young adulthood. Ishiguro slowly reveals to us how unusual these children are. In the process we visit several fundamental issues about what it means to be human, especially in the context of contemporary medical ethics.

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.

Each week the class will read poems by an individual poet, a collection of poems on a specific subject, or a collection of poems in a specific style. A wide range of poets and poetry will be presented, from classic to contemporary. We will discuss poetry from the perspective that the poet creates the work but the reader activates it.

This 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 nonfiction, 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.