Everyone has a good stories to tell. How to tell your stories and how to write them will be the focus of this 10 week workshop. Stories are the way we connect to one another, and to the larger world. Together we will explore good stories by reading, writing, and telling them. We will discuss good writing techniques, and examine all the ways that make stories good. At the end of class, all participants will have written at least one good story of her own.

One might describe literature as the lies we tell ourselves to make sense of a meaningless world. While we might find these stories entertaining and meaningful, they appeal to us because they flatter our own sets of prejudices regarding gender, religion, class, and nationality. In this course we will look at poetry, prose, and drama to understand the key elements or building blocks of each. We will then consider how a work challenges or supports the ideological biases that allow us to make sense of that work. In other words, why do we like one story but dislike another.

We will read and discuss this historical novel set in 18th Century Japan. It is loosely based on the life of Hanaoka Seishu, the first surgeon in the world to operate on his patients using general anesthesia. The novel dramatizes the competitive relationship between his wife and mother.