The Words to Say It: Writing About Illness, Trauma, and Healing [Suzanne Edison]

All Levels. By focusing on the craft of writing, we can transform personal experience into art. Readings will include excerpts from: Poetry in Medicine; The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry, Poetry as Survival, and Beauty is a Verb, and the work of Alicia Ostriker, Lucia Perillo, Susan Sontag, Lucille Clifton, Anatole Broyard, and Kevin Young, among others. Each week we will read, discuss, and write. In the last class, students may bring a piece of their own writing to workshop for feedback.