WRITING A STORY FROM TODAY’S NOISE: A four-week course in crafting a piece of fiction or nonfiction in English.

The two hour class, 15:00-17:00 will be held in the Ilaria Alpi International Library—on Sunday afternoons—November 10, 17, 24, and December 1.

Professor: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, author of Mother Tongue, The Other Side of the Tiber, Toscanelli’s Ray, L’Oceano e’ dentro di noi, and hundreds of published poems and essays. She is finishing a new book.

Class size: 12 people who have a strong competence in spoken and written English and a strong desire to write. We are looking for students or adults interested in learning how to express themselves by writing a piece in these four sessions. The scope of the class is not to improve English skills but to draw out one’s creativity.

To enroll one needs a very good level of English. This will be verified in the first class. It is not necessary, however, to be a native speaker.

The shape and philosophy of the class:

The practice of writing helps to perceive life in a more complete way; it is a stimulus to write things that are more true. It begins as an impulse to share something that no one else can say. Then we soon need tools to make it real, compelling, believable to a reader, but also to discover what it means to us, the writer. The practice of writing is a way of learning to listen to the unresolved and to engage.

In these four sessions, we will read brief pieces of fiction and nonfiction that illustrate different ways stories and essays can be told and made. The authors we read will come from today’s world, an international world, a world broken into pieces of bright promises and dark despair. The first hour will be spent examining the power and grace of published writing, with attention to its content and technique. The second hour will be spent writing in class and listening to each other’s work. By the end of the fourth class, each participant will submit an essay or story as a finished feast!