The Art of Resurrection: How to Write Prose that Lives and Breathes

Class Description

In this six-week literature course/experimental workshop, we will follow in the footsteps of the stubbornly brave Don Quixote, turning to literature as a balm, trying to craft our own prose that—like the Balsam of Fierabrás—wards off death in all its forms: the stagnant, the familiar, the forgotten.

In the first four weeks of our course, we will establish a joint framework for a literature against death, elucidating its core tenets. We will read selected essays and excerpts of visionary writers such as Carole Maso, Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elias Canetti, and more. In the last two weeks of our course, we will test our theories by reading two full-length works, including recent Nobel-laureate László Krasznahorkai's The Last Wolf.

Each class will be a mix of lecture, discussion, writing exercise, and informal workshop. Students will leave the class with an understanding of literature's profound powers of rejuvenation and resurrection, as well as a deeper relationship to the form and style of their own work.

Caleb Berg is a writer and educator from Richmond, California. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Houston, where he was an Inprint Isabel M. Elkins fellow. Currently, he works as an adjunct lecturer of English at CCC and provides editorial work for Conjunctions and Another Chicago Magazine. You can find his work online in Gulf Coast, 3:AM Magazine, and Emerge Literary Journal.

What to Expect

Format: In Person 

Class Capacity: 18 

Class Style: Workshop; participation- and assignment-based 

Materials List

Required

• Instructor-Distributed Materials

First Assignment

• Please read Carole Maso's essays "Break Every Rule” and "Precious, Disappearing Things" from her book Break Every Rule, as well as excerpts from Michel Leiris's "Alphabet," from his book Scatches, alongside Lydia Davis’s translator’s note.

Cost and Registration

6 Sessions, $290 ($261 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.

We offer our classes at three different price options: Regular ($290), Community Supported ($265), and Sponsor ($315). Following the models of other institutions, we want to ensure that our classes are accessible to a wider audience while continuing to support our instructors. You may choose the price that best fits your situation when registering through Learning Stream.

To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.

Having trouble signing up? Take a look at our step-by-step guide to registration by clicking here.

The views and opinions expressed in this class and/or by the instructor are not necessarily representative of the Newberry. We aim to ensure that in our classes, participants can have respectful disagreement to foster critical thinking. This is a space to challenge and expand our own worldviews to work towards better understanding and appreciating humanity.

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Call us at (312) 255-3700 or send us an email at adulteducation@newberry.org.

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