Winter 2007 Workshops at Writers & Books

Reading Seminars

The Genealogy of Nature Poetry

• WA7-R01
• Saturday, 10 a.m–2 p.m.
• April 21
• $37 W&B members / $39 general public
• Instructor: Karla Linn Merrifield

Part workshop, part writing seminar, this class traces the aesthetic impulses of nature poetry from the British Romantics to contemporary American poets, from Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Lawrence, Longfellow, and Whitman, through Mary Oliver and Pattiann Rodgers. Nature lovers, readers, poets and other writers—all can join this discussion and mini-workshop.

How to register

Register online

Time Travel with Edith Wharton to Old New York

• WA7-R02
• 6 Thursdays, 7–9 p.m.
• February 15 through March 22
• $113 W&B members / $119 general public
• Instructor: Karen Noske

Meet the upper crust and upstarts of Old New York via the brilliant writings of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Edith Wharton. Her vivid. lyrical, satiric, and morally serious novels present unforgettable characters, tragic love, and incisive commentary about her shifting social world. We’ll immerse ourselves in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New York: the food, music, art, fashion, cultural context, and more. Join us for some engaging and elegant time travel. We’ll start with The House of Mirth (come prepared to chat about it) and go on to Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, Old New York (stories), and A Backward Glance (autobiography).

How to register

Register online

What’s a Little Philosophy among Friends?

• WA7-R03
• 4 Thursdays, 7–9 pm
• March 15 through April 5
• $75 W&B members / $79 general public / Limit 12
• Instructor: David White

We will begin with a quick look at Plato’s Symposium and Aristotle on friendship, and then look more deliberately at Bertrand Russell’s principal philosophical friends: Lady Ottoline, Joseph Conrad (after whom Russell named two sons), D. H. Lawrence, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Finally we will focus on Norman Malcolm and Wittgenstein. The main readings are Russell’s autobiography and Malcolm’s memoir of Wittgenstein. 

How to register

Register online

Reading Hayden Carruth

• WA7-R04
• 4 Thursdays, 7–9 p.m.
• February 1 through 22
• $75 W&B members / $79 general public
• Instructor: Steven Huff
  

Upstate New York poet Hayden Carruth is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including the recent Doctor Jazz, Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (winner of the National Book Award), and a dozen books of prose. In this class we’ll be reading selections from his best known works, including his book-length The Sleeping Beauties, as well as essays that draw from his anarchist thinking and his focus on diurnal rural life. We’ll explore his inventions in poetic form, as well as his use of dialect.

How to register

Register online

All Governments Lie! Reading I. F. Stone

• WA7-R05
• 6 Tuesdays, 7 –9 p.m.
• February 13 through March 20
• $113 W&B members / $119 general public / Limit 12
• Instructor: Philip Anselmo

I.F. Stone remains one of the least known yet most influential American journalists of the wentieth century. Denounced by McCarthyites, neo-cons, and J. Edgar Hoover alike, Stone exemplified the spirit and gall of independent political journalism. This reading seminar will explore the history that made Stone and the history he made. Main readings will come from the recently published, All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone, by Myra MacPherson, and the collection of selected writings: The Best of I.F. Stone. We’ll also pour over plenty of other articles by Stone, and some Jefferson for good measure.

How to register

Register online

War and Peace

• WA7-R06
• 8 Mondays, 7–9 p.m.
• January 15 through March 5
• $121 W&B members / $129 general public / Limit 12
• Instructor: Alfred Geier

Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and Peace, is both daunting and enigmatic to many readers, perhaps because of its length. Yet it is also one of the most absorbing and complex novels in all of literature. If you have wanted to read it but were hesitant to begin the journey, here is your chance to join a guided tour. You will read 150 to 200 pages per week and join the illuminating discussions. The class will use the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation (approved by Tolstoy), which will be available in Writers & Books Bookstore. (For the first meeting, read Book One, Parts 1 and 2.)

How to register

Register online

Scott and Zelda, Ted and Sylvia: Two Tragic Literary Marriages.

• WA7-R07
• Saturday, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
• March 31
• $37 W&B members / $39 general public
• Instructor: Patricia Roth Schwartz

Who really were these two glittering couples, the Fitzgeralds and the Hughes/ Plaths? Each of these individuals achieved fame and recognition. Both wives died notorious and regrettable deaths: how did their husbands factor into what happened to them? How did these partners influence each other’s writing? Learn from their biographies, documented in journals, letters, and from their autobiographical writing. A bibliography will be included.

How to register

Register online

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