Class Description
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings. . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache.” Virginia Woolf wrote in her long essay “On Being Ill.” But she notices with dismay that such narratives avoid a central concern, “Literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind… the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear.”
In our time, the body in pain has come into its own as a subject. From Joan Didion to Cheryl Strayed to Oliver Sacks to John Green, tales of illness and survivorship are more than a preoccupation, they are page-turners. In this seminar, we will discuss excerpts from recent memoirs by authors Sonya Hubert, Mike Scalise, Paul Lisicky, fiction by Adam Haslett and J.M. Coetzee, and tap the wisdom of thinkers Montaigne, Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry. In exercises, our focus will be on bringing the person behind the patient forward, exploring backstory, attending to voice, dialogue, scene development, self-examination, central images, and metaphors. In short, our craft continues to sharpen around the depiction of life. Any and all writers welcome who are writing in the fields of narrative medicine, or about characters experiencing disability, disease, acute and chronic illness. The floor is open to your own projects.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting!
Zoom Participation:
Students are not required to turn their camera on, but are encouraged to participate any way they feel comfortable through functions such as the live chat, emoji reactions, and unmuting the microphone. Learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
We ask that instructors enable closed captioning and send a transcript of the session after class. You can also enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting. If your instructor forgets to send the transcript, just send ’em an email!