POLITICS & PLACE
 With Heba F. El-Shazli The river Nile has nourished many peoples and their civilizations along its banks over the centuries and inspired many stories, tragedies, violence, power, and control… this course will travel along the Nile and meet the people, their stories, and cultures along the way – south to north. Join us on this literary journey along the Nile River through historical books, novels, and mystery. Five Mondays: January 23, February 6 and 20, March 6 and 27 from 1 to 3 p.m. ET Online |
 With Annie Finch As reproductive rights come under unprecedented attack, explore the landmark new anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, the first major literary anthology on abortion, under the guidance of the book’s editor Annie Finch. We will read and discuss powerful work in poetry, drama, and prose on this major theme, invoking grief, defiance, shame, tenderness, compassion, rage, and triumph. Authors include Amy Tan, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Parker, Gloria Naylor, Gloria Steinem, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Steinem, Jean Rhys, Joyce Carol Oates, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lindy West, Margaret Atwood, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Ursula Le Guin. Two Mondays: March 20 and 27, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET Online |
With Supriya Goswami In this 2-week class we will consider the complex historical and political trans-Atlantic legacies of Empire by pairing V.S Naipaul’s Miguel Street, a collection of stories set in Trinidad during World War II, with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, the only fictional account of Nigeria’s Biafran War. Two Thursdays: May 4 and 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m Online EST |
FICTION
 With Susan Rubin Suleiman The 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature went to a writer very well known in France but not in the U.S. Among Ernaux’s preferred subjects is her family: mother, father, and herself, their only child, born in 1940. In this two-session course, we will read a trilogy starting with the book that made her famous in France, A Man’s Place, whose main subject was her father, and continuing with A Woman’s Story (about her mother) and Shame (about family life in their small town). Note dates have been updated: Two Wednesdays: March 15 and 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. ET Hybrid Online and In-Person Connecticut Ave. Condo Classroom In-person seats are Sold Out |
 With Elaine Showalter In her edition of Shirley Jackson’s fiction for the Library of America, Joyce Carol Oates emphasized the Gothic elements of psychological horror that made Jackson’s work both influential and inimitable. In her own fiction, Oates too has created a teeming and violent world of the contemporary American Gothic. In this class, we will look at gender, genre, and nationality in their short stories, plus Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Oates’s Solstice. Five Thursdays: March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, from 2 to 4 p.m. ET Online |
 With Sean Blink Join recent Yale Ph.D., Dr. Sean Blink, for an in-depth look at the darkly hilarious world of the great Ukrainian-Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, whose writing offers a sweeping panoramic view of the Russian Empire’s absurdities and might just provide a guide for understanding contemporary conflicts. Six Thursdays Evey Other Week: February 16, March 2, 16, 30, April 13, 27 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. ET Online |
 With Victoria Pedrick The well born maiden in Greek myth is the precious flower of her father’s household, her very fragility, so carefully guarded, a sign of his prestige but also and even more importantly, his personal contribution to the well-being of his city.The ancient Athenian audience as they watched these maidens defy restraint or demand impossible things, might have pondered how very dangerous the unruly young woman could be. We too can still be startled by the shocking power of a child—at least in our eyes—who decides she has nothing to lose. Six Mondays: March 13, 20, 27, April 3, 10, 17, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. ET Online |
 With Aaron Hamburger Tom Stoppard, generally acknowledged as one of our greatest living playwrights, creates witty and dense theatrical works that demand close attention, even as they whiz by us as we watch them on stage. Come to this course to closely examine four of his masterpieces. Four Mondays: March 27, April 3, 10, 17 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET Hybrid Online and in person at Conn. Ave. Condo Classroom |
 With Michele Simms-Burton In addition to writing poetry, autobiography, and fiction, Langston Hughes penned several plays, song lyrics, and librettos. This class will provide you with a more in depth understanding of Hughes the writer and man, and how he sustained a career that spanned more than forty years. Four Saturdays: April 8, 15, 22, and 29, from noon to 2 p.m. ET Online |
 With Tara Campbell Writers of color are on the vanguard of inventive and thought-provoking science fiction, fantasy, horror and other stories that fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction. Let’s celebrate New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, Volume 2 (March 2023) with a discussion of the stories, examining the varied pasts, presents, and futures they explore. Three Sundays: April 16, 23, 30, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET Online |
With Carrie Callaghan This one-session class will dig deep into Diaz's 1920's story, examining who, in fact, can be trusted and what truth and wealth do to one another. Hernan Diaz's acclaimed novel takes this inquiry layers deeper, drawing the reader into a narrative puzzle that investigates the costs of such dizzying wealth. One Sunday: May 21 from 2pm to 4pm Online ET |
 With Pleydell and Matsakis This class will unpack how special and general relativity theory manifest in Virginia Woolf’s iconic novel, “To the Lighthouse”. Join one of the world’s timekeepers and international authorities on relativity, Dr. Demetrios Matsakis, and seasoned Politics and Prose teacher, Sarah Pleydell, for this two-session workshop that includes lecture, discussion and creative writing exercises designed to illuminate and provoke. Please note new dates: Two Sundays: June 4th and 11th from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. ET Online |
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With Aaron Hamburger With a few short but dense books, Keegan has been taking the literary world by storm. Her jewel-like writing with its remarkable concision has earned comparisons to fellow Irish master William Trevor and the great Anton Chekhov. Over three weeks, we'll take a look at three key works of this rising literary star. Three Wednesdays: June 7, 14 and 21 from 6:30 to 8pm. |
WRITING
 With Brittany Kerfoot Using published works of short fiction as our guide, this workshop will jump-start the creative process for new writers or focus the skills of more experienced writers by creating interesting, believable characters. Four Tuesdays: April 11, 18, 25 and May 2 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET Online |
 With Donna Hemans Focusing on narrative structure and creative storytelling techniques, this workshop will help writers revise and polish their personal essay drafts. Four Wednesdays: April 12, 19, 26, May 3, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET Online |
María Fernanda Join María Fernanda, an award-winning poet and education programmer at the Kennedy Center, in a workshop curated for participants to explore their own poetic range. Participants will chart the literary structure of various poetry collections that are founded on a particular theme. Explore syntactic variations of your own poetic range through a number of generative writing exercises. Four Mondays: May 8, 15, 22, and 29 from 6 to 8 p.m. Online ET |
 With Joyce Winslow Created for fiction writers of all levels, this course hones techniques writers often overlook or use haphazardly. You’ll learn the reason for sensory details and which dominate your writing to the exclusion of others. Four Thursdays: May 4, 11, 18, 25 from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. ET Online |
 With Randon Billings Noble A lyric essay. Sounds intriguing – but what exactly is it? Come explore the more experimental side of the essay by reading – and sketching – flash, segmented, braided, and hermit crab essays. (Hermit crab essays? Yes!) Find out more with Randon Billings Noble, essayist and editor of the new anthology of lyric essays A Harp in the Stars. Four Wednesdays: May 10, 17, 24, 31 from 6 to 8 p.m. ET Online |
 With Bob Levey Join prize-winning former Washington Post columnist Bob Levey for a spirited, detailed look at how to write a compelling piece of informed opinion. Students will examine approximately eight pieces by famous writers, and will learn how to approach and create a worthy column, blog, review or essay. Four Tuesdays: May 23, 30, and June 6, 13 from 6 to 8 pm Online ET |
POETRY
 With Indran Amirthanayagam Federico Garcia Lorca inspired poets, professionals and ordinary people. He had an impeccable ear, and a prodigious memory, and he used these to write indelible plays, poems, essays and letters. In this course we will read Lorca as if we were students in his workshop, learning his techniques and absorbing his wonder before the Sun and the Moon, stars and rivers. Four Wednesdays: April 12, 19, 26, May 3, from 6 to 8:00 p.m. ET Online |
 With Christopher Griffin Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) has been among the most beloved of modern poets and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Since Heaney’s 1965 “Digging,” the first poem in Death of a Naturalist, he has been among the most read poets in English. He has articulated experiences of his vivid childhood sensations on a Derry farm and explored political tensions in Northern Ireland. He has combined personal lyrics with public themes. He was also a fine translator of classic verse and drama from various languages. Four consecutive Fridays: April 21, 28, May 5, 12, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET Online |
 With Annie Finch Sharing a lifelong passion, Poet Annie Finch guides us on a deep dive through great poetry’s rhythmic mysteries. How can scanning poems help unlock their beauties, meanings, and dynamics? What is the best way to scan a poem? Is there meter in free verse? We will delve into a diversity of meters by mapping the music. Four Mondays: April 24, May 1, 8, 15 from 2 to 4:00 p.m. ET Online |
 With Frank Ambrosio The Divine Comedy offers us the most familiar, yet most mysterious of all spectacles: the human journey through the full cycle of life and death. Frank Ambrosio, director of Georgetown University’s My Dante Project, lays out a roadmap that enables participants to experience the Comedy as Dante intended: a journey of self-discovery, both terrible and sublime, set in a landscape as varied as the array of unforgettable characters who reside there. Seven Tuesdays: April 11, 18, 25 and May 2, 9, 16, 23, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET Online |
MEDITATION & PHILOSOPHY
 With Jerry Webster Tsoknyi Rinpoche, an internationally renowned meditation teacher and Daniel Goleman, New York Times bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, have co-created a new approach to traditional meditative teachings and methods. Tsoknyi found that after decades of teaching traditional methods to Westerners, these methods often did not work. Tsoknyi wanted to help heal the connection between mind and heart for his students. so he reinvented his approach to nourish the heart mind interconnections. We will delve into how these teachings apply emotionally in our daily lives as presented in the new work. Three Thursdays: April 13, 20, 27 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. ET Online |
NONFICTION
 With Janet Hulstrand The Midwest is sometimes (ungenerously!) referred to as “flyover country.” But it is a vast, diverse, beautiful, and fascinating part of the country. In this class we will read and discuss four memoirs about life in the Midwest. Five Fridays: April, 7, 14, 21, 28, May 5, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. ET Online |