The Art of Telling — A Creative Writing Salon with James F. Mulhern

An Invitation

Welcome

This salon is for anyone who has ever started a poem in their head while looking out a window, kept a journal, carried a story they never told, or has pages in a drawer they always meant to come back to.

Whether you are brand new to writing or have been at it for decades, you are welcome here. The Art of Telling is a free course for residents of 2601 — ten Sunday afternoons of reading together, writing together, and talking honestly about how stories work, moving deliberately through three great genres of narrative: the short story, poetry, and memoir.

There are no grades, no quizzes, and no required publication outcomes. There is only the work, the company, and the slow accumulation of skill.

What This Course Is

A salon — a small literary gathering for adult readers and writers. Over ten Sundays we move through three of the great genres of narrative. The same fundamentals (image, voice, scene, structure, revision) recur in each unit, treated through the conventions and pressures specific to that genre. By the time we close, you will have practiced narrative across all three forms.

What This Course Is Not

It is not a workshop in the harsh sense. No one will be asked to share who does not want to.
There are no grades, no quizzes, no required deliverables.
Nothing said in this room leaves this room.
Nothing is for sale here. This is a free course for residents of 2601.

Course Document

Syllabus

The full course at a glance — shape, schedule, what to expect each week, and what is asked of you.

To Save Your Own Copy Select the syllabus text below with your mouse, press Ctrl + C (Windows) or ⌘ + C (Mac), open a blank Word document, and press Ctrl + V (or ⌘ + V) to paste. Then save and print — you will have your own copy of the syllabus.

The Shape of the Course

The Art of Telling is built as a sustained study of narrative — how it is shaped, how it is heard, how it earns the reader’s trust — moving across three forms in turn. The same fundamentals (image, voice, scene, structure, revision) recur in each unit, treated through the conventions and pressures specific to that genre.

Unit One

The Short Story

Sessions 1 – 4

We begin with fiction because the short story is where the elements of narrative come most clearly into view. We read short, complete stories — Hemingway, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Katherine Mansfield, and Chekhov — and examine how scene, summary, character, and the seven questions every story must answer combine to make experience legible on the page.

May 17 · May 24 · May 31 · June 7

Unit Two

Poetry

Sessions 5 – 7

We turn next to poetry, where narrative is compressed and the line itself becomes a unit of meaning. We read Bishop, Heaney, Oliver, Kenyon, Clifton, Frost, and Williams — and practice the image, the line, and the lyric “I” as instruments of storytelling.

June 14 · June 21 · June 28

Unit Three

Memoir

Sessions 8 – 10

We close with memoir — the place where lived experience becomes literature. We read Frederick Douglass, Mary Antin, Booker T. Washington, and Sherwood Anderson — and examine the double structure of memoir (what happened versus what it means), the ethics and craft of writing about real people, and the difficult work of revision.

July 5 · July 12 · July 19

Closing

Farewell

The Writing Life

A closing meditation on the writing life and what comes next.

July 26

Course Details

When: Ten Sundays, 4:00–5:30 PM
Where: The Community Room
First session: Sunday, May 17, 2026
Final session: Sunday, July 26, 2026
Cost: Free — a free course for residents of 2601
Class size: Limited to 12, with possible room for 15

What to Expect Each Week

Before Class — about 30 to 60 minutes

A short reading — drawn from the relevant unit (a story for the fiction weeks, a small set of poems for the poetry weeks, a brief memoir passage for the memoir weeks). The reading is always brief. You will get more from it by reading it twice than by skimming it once. Click any reading link in the Readings section below to open the text.

During Class — 90 minutes

A short opening read-aloud (about ten minutes)
A focused discussion of the day’s craft topic (about thirty minutes)
A ten-minute in-class writing exercise (laptops closed, pen and paper)
Voluntary sharing and warm response (about thirty minutes)
A closing reflection (about ten minutes)

After Class

A short writing assignment (optional, never collected, always welcomed). Weekly notes and worksheets are posted right here on this site — in each session’s entry below.

A Few Promises to You

I will not embarrass you. Nothing said in this room leaves this room.
I will not ask you to share writing you do not want to share.
I will respond to your work honestly, specifically, and warmly.
I will keep us on time. We start at 4:00; we end at 5:30.
I will treat your time as the most valuable thing you bring.

A Few Asks of You

Come, if you can. The arc of the course depends on the room.
Read the brief readings before each session. They are short on purpose.
Be generous with one another. Many of us are writing about things that matter.
If you are nervous, come anyway. Nervousness is the cost of caring.

Ten Sundays

Schedule at a Glance

#	Date	Theme
Unit I · The Short Story
1	Sun May 17	Opening — What Is a Story?
2	Sun May 24	The Seven Questions Every Story Must Answer
3	Sun May 31	Scene and Summary — When to Slow Down, When to Move
4	Sun Jun 7	Character and Desire — What Pulls a Story Forward
Unit II · Poetry
5	Sun Jun 14	Image and the Poetic Line
6	Sun Jun 21	Voice and the Lyric “I”
7	Sun Jun 28	Compression — How a Poem Holds a Whole World
Unit III · Memoir
8	Sun Jul 5	Memory and the Memoir Impulse
9	Sun Jul 12	The Double Structure — What Happened, What It Means
10	Sun Jul 19	Revision — How Writers Actually Re-See
Farewell
—	Sun Jul 26	The Writing Life

We meet ten times. The Farewell gathering on July 26 closes the course.

Before You Arrive

What to Bring & What to Read

Each Week, Bring

A notebook and a pen you like writing with
A laptop or tablet (we read together on screen for the first half-hour)
Whatever you are currently working on, or wish to start
An open ear

What you don’t need to bring: prior publication, credentials, confidence, or a finished project. You only need curiosity, generosity, and a willingness to listen closely — to language, and to one another.

Required Text

Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway — any edition. Used copies typically $7–$15 from ThriftBooks, AbeBooks, or Amazon Used. Burroway covers all three genres — fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction — and is the single most useful book for what we are doing here.

You do not need to buy the book before Session 1. Bring the book from Session 2 onward if you can.

Recommended (Not Required)

Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott The kindest, funniest, most practical book ever written about the daily reality of being a writer. Famous for the “shitty first drafts” chapter and for the title parable about taking large work one small piece at a time. Read it when you are discouraged.
On Writing — Stephen King Half memoir, half craft manual. The memoir half tells how King became a writer; the craft half is a no-nonsense toolbox — on adverbs, on dialogue, on the open door and the closed door. Useful even (especially) for writers who do not write what King writes.
The Art of Memoir — Mary Karr The best book in print on the actual making of memoir — voice, memory, the ethics of writing about real people, and how to put yourself on the page without lying or grandstanding. Pairs naturally with our Unit III.
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry — Jane Hirshfield Nine essays on what poems do and how they do it — concentration, music, the originality of the image, translation, the mind of the poem itself. Quiet, deep, and the best companion to our Unit II.
The Situation and the Story — Vivian Gornick A short, indispensable book on the central distinction in personal nonfiction: the situation (what happened) versus the story (what the writer has come to understand about it). The book that makes the older voice / younger voice question we discuss in Unit III.

A Note About Laptops

Most sessions, we will spend the first 30–40 minutes reading and discussing a short text together — on screen, side by side, by clicking the reading link on this site. Then we close the laptops for the writing exercise. You will not need any special software — just a web browser. The ten-minute in-class writing exercise is always by hand, on paper. Handwriting is slower than typing, and the slowness is exactly what good drafting needs.

How You’ll Access the Readings

Every reading on this site falls into one of three categories:

Public-domain texts — older works (Hemingway, Chekhov, Frost, Williams) live on free archives like Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, and the Library of Congress. Click the link, read.
Library e-books — if you’d like to read any of these works in their fuller editions (the full Walden, the full Promised Land), your library card from any public library will let you borrow the e-book or audiobook for free on Libby or Hoopla.

Every reading we discuss in class is one click away on this site. The only book you may want to purchase is the inexpensive used copy of Burroway’s Imaginative Writing noted under What to Bring — it is not required for Session 1, and used copies typically run $7–$15.

Ten Afternoons

The Sessions

For each Sunday: the focus, the main points of the lesson, the reading link, the in-class practice, a discussion guide, and a printable worksheet you can copy into a Word document and bring with you.

Session One · Unit I — The Short Story

Opening — What Is a Story?

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

A story is shaped experience that means something. Three words do the whole work: shaped, experience, means.
Experience. Something must happen — even something small. The simplest diagnostic question: What happens? Answer in one sentence.
Shaped. The writer’s central task is selection. What to include, what to leave out, what to put first, what to dwell on.
Means. A story leaves the reader changed by an inch. It has consequence.
Why we write by hand for the in-class exercise: handwriting is slower than typing, and the slowness is exactly what good drafting needs.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants” — read on Wikisource

In-Class Writing Prompt — Laptops Closed

Write about a moment — real or imagined — when someone in your life said something you have never forgotten. Just one moment. Set the scene briefly. Then write the thing that was said, and what happened next, or what didn’t happen.

You will have ten minutes. Do not stop to revise. Do not stop to spell. If you get stuck, write I am stuck, but the room had … and keep going.

What happens with this: nothing is collected. It is yours, written on paper, in your notebook. At the end of class two or three volunteers may read one sentence aloud if they would like to. No one is asked to share.

Discussion Questions

What is the difference between something happening and a story being told? Where is the line?
In the Hemingway, what was selected in? What was left out? What does that selection do?
What does it mean to say a story has “consequence”? Can you name a story that left you changed by an inch?

Homework

Fill out the First-Day Worksheet (below) and bring it to Session 2. This is the one worksheet I will collect — it helps me learn names and what each of you most wants to write.
Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” — one click from the Session 2 box below, or from the Readings page. It is short, roughly 6,000 words.
Optional: take what you wrote in class today and expand it to about one page in your notebook. No one will be asked to share unless they want to.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 2

The Seven Questions Every Story Must Answer. We turn the definition we built today into a working lens you can use on any story — including your own. We will apply the seven questions to Gilman together, and then in pairs to whatever piece of your own you would like to think about.

First-Day Worksheet — please bring this to Session 2

This is the one worksheet I will collect. After our first Sunday, copy the lines below into a Word document, fill it out at home in the week between Session 1 and Session 2, and hand it to me on your way in next Sunday. It helps me learn your name, what brought you, and what you most want to write. Nothing on this sheet will be shared with the room.

Your preferred name (the name you’d like to be called in this room): ____________________
What brought you here today? (One or two sentences is plenty.)
What have you always wanted to write — even if you never have?
A book, story, or poem that has stayed with you:

(All the other session worksheets after this one are for your own notebook — never collected, never shared. This first one is the only exception, and it is only so I can know who is in the room.)

Session Two · Unit I — The Short Story

The Seven Questions Every Story Must Answer

Sunday, May 24, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Move from definition (Session 1) to application: the seven questions become a working lens on a real story.
The seven questions: whose story is it? — what does this character want? — what stands in the way? — what is at stake? — when does the story change? — what does the character understand at the end that they did not understand at the beginning? — why this story, and why now?
A strong story answers all seven. A weak story leaves one or more unanswered — usually without the writer knowing.
The seventh question is the hardest, and the one that separates publishable fiction from competent fiction.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” — Project Gutenberg (public domain). A short, taut 1892 story told in the journal of a woman confined to a room for her own good. Every one of the seven questions has a clear answer in the text — and the unreliability of the narrator makes the diagnostic vivid.

In-Class Practice

In pairs, take three of the seven questions and try to answer them — about the piece you wrote in Session 1, about anything you have written recently and would like to think about, or, if nothing comes to mind, about the Gilman story we just read. Use the worksheet below. Nothing needs to be brought to class beyond your notebook.

What happens with this: the conversation stays inside your pair. Notes go in your notebook. Nothing is collected. We will surface anything you choose to surface in the discussion that follows.

Discussion Questions

Whose story is “The Yellow Wallpaper”? Where in the text do we know?
What does the narrator want? What does she think she wants? Are they the same?
When does the story change? Can you locate the turn?
What does the narrator understand at the end that she did not understand at the beginning? — and what is the gap between what she understands and what we, as readers, understand?
Of the seven questions, which one is hardest to answer — either for the Gilman, or for something you have written or are thinking about writing? Why?

From the Required Text

If you have a copy of Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway, read the first chapter.

Homework

Read Katherine Mansfield’s “At the Bay” — one click from the Session 3 box below, or from the Readings page. It is longer than what we have read so far; give yourself an hour.
Optional — about ten minutes: answer two of the seven questions about a single page of writing you have done in this course so far, or about anything in your notebook.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 3

Scene & Summary — When to Slow Down, When to Move. We move from what a story does to how it controls time on the page. We will mark Mansfield’s opening pages paragraph by paragraph, and then mark a page of writing of your own the same way.

The Seven Questions Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy this list into a Word document. Answer it for the Gilman, for the piece you wrote in Session 1, or for any story you are thinking about — whether on the page yet or not. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Whose story is it? ____________________
What does this character want? ____________________
What stands in the way? ____________________
What is at stake? ____________________
When does the story change? ____________________
What does the character understand at the end that they did not at the beginning? ____________________
Why this story, and why now? ____________________

Session Three · Unit I — The Short Story

Scene & Summary — When to Slow Down, When to Move

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Scene puts the reader in the room. Time slows; dialogue is heard; objects are seen; small gestures matter.
Summary covers ground. Time accelerates; events are reported rather than dramatized.
Why scene-heavy prose feels languid; why summary-heavy prose feels remote; why mature writing balances both.
The craft is in the pacing — knowing when to slow time down and when to compress it.
A diagnostic: mark every paragraph S or M. If all are scene, the draft has not yet found what to leave out. If only one is scene, the draft has not yet found where to slow down.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay” (from The Garden Party) — Project Gutenberg (public domain). We’ll read the opening pages aloud. Mansfield is the writer Alice Munro called her teacher — the scene-to-summary alternation here is exquisite.

After Our Discussion — Critical Reception

Open these only after you’ve formed your own response. Reading criticism first can crowd out your own voice.

Katherine Mansfield Society — on “At the Bay”

In-Class Practice

Take a moment from your own life — one you have not yet written about, or one you began in Session 1 — and write it twice. Once as a one-paragraph summary, once as a one-page scene. We will discuss what each version makes possible and what it costs. Pen, paper, your notebook. Nothing needed beyond what is already in the room.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. After the writing, two or three volunteers may read a short passage aloud if they would like to — we discuss what scene and what summary make possible. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

In the Mansfield passage, where does she slow down into scene? Where does she compress into summary? Why there?
Read a page of writing you have done in this course — the Session 1 piece, or what you just wrote — or any page from the Mansfield. Mark each paragraph S or M. What does the ratio reveal?
What can scene do that summary cannot? What can summary do that scene cannot?
Is there a moment in something you have written (in this course or before) that you have summarized that should be a scene? Or scened that should be summarized?

Homework

Read Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” — one click from the Session 4 box below, or from the Readings page.
Optional: mark a page of your own writing (or any page) S or M, paragraph by paragraph, using the worksheet above. Bring a sentence or two of reaction to class.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 4

Character & Desire — What Pulls a Story Forward. We close the short-story unit by looking at the engine of all narrative: a character who wants something and cannot easily have it. We will read Chekhov together and then write a short paragraph of our own in which a character wants something small and cannot get it.

Scene / Summary Diagnostic — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Use the table to mark a page of your own writing — or, if you do not yet have a page of your own, mark the first page of the Mansfield instead. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Paragraph 1 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 2 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 3 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 4 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 5 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 6 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 7 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________
Paragraph 8 — S or M? What does it do for the reader? __________

Reflection: Which paragraph should be the opposite of what it is? Why?

Session Four · Unit I — The Short Story

Character & Desire — What Pulls a Story Forward

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

A character is not a description of a person. A character is a want with a body around it.
Without desire, you have a portrait. Without obstacle, you have wish fulfillment. Without consequence, you have anecdote.
The want can be hidden from the character. The story is often the process of finding out.
The want can be opposed by another want in the same character. This is the source of nearly all interior fiction.
The smallest want, taken seriously, can carry a story.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog” — read on Project Gutenberg

In-Class Practice

Write a single paragraph — right now, in your notebook — in which a character wants something small and ordinary, and cannot get it. The character can be invented or drawn from someone you know. We’ll discuss how desire shows itself through behavior, not declaration.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may read their paragraph aloud after the writing. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

What does Gurov want in “The Lady with the Dog”? Does he know?
Where does desire show itself through behavior rather than declaration?
For a character you have written about in this course, or one you are thinking about writing: what does that character want? What stands in the way? (If no character comes to mind, try the question on Gurov.)
Is the want opposed by another want in the same character? What is that interior conflict?

Homework

Read all four poems in the Session 5 box below: Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” Robert Frost’s “Birches,” William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.” Together they total maybe ten minutes of reading. Read each one twice.
Optional: answer the Character & Desire Worksheet above for a character of your own or for Gurov.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 5 · Unit II opens

Image & the Poetic Line. We turn to poetry. We will look at how images carry meaning (more than statement can) and at the work the line break does (more than the comma can). You do not need to think of yourself as a “poet” to do the work.

Character & Desire Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Fill in for a character of your own — from this course or from anywhere — or for a character from one of our readings. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Character’s name: ____________________
The want they would name aloud: ____________________
The deeper want underneath (perhaps unknown to them): ____________________
The obstacle — external: ____________________
The obstacle — internal: ____________________
The opposing want inside the same character: ____________________
What will they lose if they fail? ____________________
One small behavior that shows the want without naming it: ____________________

Session Five · Unit II — Poetry

Image & the Poetic Line

Sunday, June 14, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Poetry is not prose with line breaks — it is a different way of making meaning. Where prose narrates, poetry distills.
The image is the basic unit of poetic meaning — a concrete sensory detail that carries emotional or intellectual weight beyond itself.
In prose, the sentence is the basic unit of rhythm. In poetry, the line is.
The line break is the most powerful piece of punctuation a poet has. It decides what the eye lingers on, where the breath rests, where the meaning turns.
A diagnostic: circle every concrete noun in a draft. Concrete nouns are how poems mean.

Readings for Class — Click to Open

Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art” — Poetry Foundation
Robert Frost, “Birches” — Poetry Foundation
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” — Poetry Foundation
Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” — Library of Congress

In-Class Practice

Right here, in your notebook, write three sentences of plain prose — about anything (the room, what you ate this morning, a memory from this week). Then break those sentences into lines. Read aloud. Notice what the line breaks add — and what they take away.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. The reading aloud is the point of the exercise — you read your own version to your partner or to the room. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

In Bishop’s “One Art,” what is the work that the list of images does that argument could not?
Read Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” aloud. What happens at each line break?
Choose a single line from any poem we read today. Why does it end where it ends?
In a poem you are drafting, circle every concrete noun. What do you notice?

Homework

Read the three poems in the Session 6 box below: Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” Jane Kenyon’s “Otherwise,” and Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me.” Each one is short. Read aloud at least once.
Optional: take three sentences of any prose — yours or anyone’s — and break them into lines. Notice what changes.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 6

Voice & the Lyric “I.” We look at how the “I” of a poem is a constructed voice, not the poet, and how that choice changes everything. We will hear three very different poetic “I”s — Heaney’s plainspoken son, Kenyon’s quiet survivor, Clifton’s defiant celebrant.

Image & Line Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Try the exercise on any prose paragraph. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Write or paste three sentences of plain prose — about anything — here.
Break each sentence into lines. Write each version.
Mark with a star (★) the line break that surprised you most.
Circle every concrete noun in your favorite version.
Cross out every adjective that explains what the noun already shows.
Read aloud. Write one sentence about what you heard.

Session Six · Unit II — Poetry

Voice & the Lyric “I”

Sunday, June 21, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

The “I” of a poem is not the same as the poet. It is a constructed voice — a position the poet chooses to speak from.
The lyric “I” can be intimate, distant, formal, plain, performative, hidden, or refused entirely.
Voice precedes plot. Readers commit to a narrator before they commit to a story.
Distance is a dial, not a switch. Close can pull back for a beat, then return.
Ask of your own poem: Whose voice is this, exactly? The more sharply you can name it, the more focused the poem will become.

Readings for Class — Click to Open

Seamus Heaney, “Digging” — Poetry Foundation
Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise” — Academy of American Poets
Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” — Poetry Foundation

In-Class Practice

Take any paragraph you know well — a piece you have written in this course, a stretch of one of our readings, or a paragraph you write right now from memory. Rewrite it twice. First in close third person; then in a removed first person looking back years later. Compare. What survives the change? What only one version can do?

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may read both versions aloud so the room can hear what voice does. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

Whose voice in your own reading life feels most distinct? Name two specific habits of that voice.
Look at any piece of writing — one of yours, or a paragraph of any reading from this course. Where does the narrative distance shift? Is the shift earned, or accidental?
In a piece of writing you have done, or any reading from this course, what does the narrator know that the protagonist does not — and how is the gap signaled?
Pick any of our readings. What is one piece of information that story withholds? What does the withholding ask of the reader? Then ask the same of any piece you have written.
Pick any of our readings. If the writer switched point of view in the opening, what would the reader gain? What would they lose?

Homework

Re-read the three poems in the Session 7 box below: Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” (revisited), Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” and Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me.” Read each aloud. Time the reading; notice how short these poems are and how much they carry.
Optional: name the voice in something you are writing — in one phrase — using the Voice Worksheet above.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 7

Compression — How a Poem Holds a Whole World. We close the poetry unit by looking at how poems gain force by leaving things out. We will look for places in our own drafts where we are explaining what the image already says — and cut them.

Voice Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Fill in for a poem or passage you are drafting — or for one of our readings. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Name the voice in one phrase (e.g., the voice of someone who has lost their faith but not their memory of it): ____________________
Two diction habits of this voice: ____________________
One thing this voice will never say: ____________________
One thing this voice withholds from the reader: ____________________
Exit reflection — complete the sentence: The voice I most want to develop in my next draft is one that ____________________

Session Seven · Unit II — Poetry

Compression — How a Poem Holds a Whole World

Sunday, June 28, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Compression is not shortness. A short poem can be diffuse; a long poem can be compressed.
Compression is density of meaning per unit of language.
Compression comes from three things: precision of image, economy of line, and trust in the reader.
The poem leaves space for the reader to do the rest.
In your own drafts, look for places where you are explaining what the image already says. Cut them. The poem will gain force.

Readings for Class — Click to Open

William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (revisited) — Poetry Foundation
Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” — Library of Congress
Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” — Poetry Foundation

In-Class Practice

Take any short poem — a fresh draft you write here in your notebook, the three-line lineated piece you made in Session 5, or one of our readings — and look for places where the language is explaining what the image already says. Cross them out. Read the cut version aloud.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may read the before-and-after aloud. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

What does “The Red Wheelbarrow” do in sixteen words that a paragraph of prose could not?
Look at a short piece you have written — or, if you do not have one to hand, look at the Williams or the Oliver. Where is the language explaining what the image already says?
What does compression ask of the reader? What does it offer in return?

Homework

Read the opening chapter of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) — one click from the Session 8 box below. Read the first chapter only, unless you want to read further.
Optional: take one short poem you have written and cut every line that explains what the image already says.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 8 · Unit III opens

Memory & the Memoir Impulse. We turn to memoir — the most personal of the three forms. We will read the opening pages of Douglass and ask why memoir is not the same as autobiography. We will free-write a moment from our own lives we have never written about.

Compression Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Apply to any poem of your own. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Paste a draft of your own — or any short poem — here. Cross out every line that explains what the image already says.
List every concrete noun — one per line. Are there enough? ____________________
What can you trust the reader to bring? ____________________
Read the cut version aloud. Did it gain force or lose it? ____________________

Session Eight · Unit III — Memoir

Memory & the Memoir Impulse

Sunday, July 5, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Memoir is not autobiography. Autobiography is the chronicle of a life. Memoir is the shaping of a slice of life into literature.
Vivian Gornick’s central truth: the situation is what happened; the story is what it means.
We write memoir not to remember, but to find out what we remember.
Memoir is committed to the truth of memory, which is not the same as the truth of fact.
Three principles for writing about real people: write as if they will read it; distinguish the person from the character; ask the writer’s question, what is this for?

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Frederick Douglass, opening chapter of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) — Project Gutenberg (public domain). Douglass’s opening — “I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age” — is one of the founding moments of American memoir. The older voice and the younger experience speak together openly. We will read the first chapter only.

In-Class Practice

In your notebook: free-write for ten minutes on a moment from your own life you have never written about. Then, in another ten minutes, write the same moment from the point of view of someone else who was there. We will discuss what each version revealed. No prior writing required.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. The work of this session is the most personal in the whole course — nothing is collected, nothing is shared with the room unless you choose. We discuss what the writing taught you, not what you wrote.

Discussion Questions

Why do we write memoir? What is the difference between remembering and finding out what we remember?
In Douglass’s opening chapter, what does the writer let us see? What does the writer choose to withhold — and why?
Is there a moment from your own life you have always meant to write? What stops you?
How do you distinguish the person from the character on the page?

Homework

Read the opening chapters of two memoirs in the Session 9 box below: Mary Antin, the opening of The Promised Land, and Booker T. Washington, the opening of Up from Slavery. Both are public domain; read the opening only.
Optional: sit for ten minutes with the Memoir Impulse Worksheet above and free-write a paragraph from what comes up.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 9

The Double Structure — What Happened, What It Means. We look at the hardest skill in memoir: the doubled voice — the younger self living through the experience, and the older self looking back at it. Antin lets the older voice in early and openly; Washington keeps it almost entirely withheld. We will compare both and try the move ourselves.

Memoir Impulse Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Use it as a prompt sheet for free writing. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose. The work of memoir is your own.

A moment from my life I have never written about: ____________________
Why have I not written it? ____________________
Who else was there? ____________________
What is this for? ____________________
One real person who would appear in this piece. How do I distinguish the person from the character? ____________________

Session Nine · Unit III — Memoir

The Double Structure — What Happened, What It Means

Sunday, July 12, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

The hardest skill in memoir is the double voice: the younger self living through the experience, and the older self looking back at it.
The younger voice supplies the texture, the immediacy, the not-yet-knowing.
The older voice supplies the reflection, the pattern, the meaning the younger self could not yet see.
These two voices speak together on the page.
The choice of how much to withhold the older voice is the craft. Antin lets it in early; Washington almost never lets it in. Both are legitimate.

Readings for Class — Click to Open

Mary Antin, opening chapter of The Promised Land — Project Gutenberg (public domain). A 1912 immigrant memoir where the older voice and the younger voice speak openly together — a foundational example of the form modern memoirists have inherited.
Booker T. Washington, opening chapter of Up from Slavery — Project Gutenberg (public domain). The opposite craft move: the older voice almost entirely withheld, the boy’s experience left to do its own work.

After Our Discussion — Critical Reception

Open these only after you’ve formed your own response.

Library of America on Mary Antin — on the place of The Promised Land
National Park Service on Up from Slavery — historical context and critical reading

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. — Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

Notice how steady the older voice is here — observational, almost detached, holding back any reflection it does not need. We will compare this restraint to the very different opening of Mary Antin.

In-Class Practice

Take a paragraph you wrote in Session 8. Mark every sentence as Y (younger voice) or O (older, reflective voice). Where could you let one come forward? Where could you let the other go quiet?

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may report what the Y/O marking showed them about the paragraph — in general terms, without reading the paragraph itself, unless they want to. Nothing collected.

Discussion Questions

In the opening of The Promised Land, where is the older voice? Where is the younger voice?
In Washington, what does it mean that the older voice is almost entirely withheld? What is the effect on the reader?
In your own memoir writing, which voice tends to come forward first — younger or older? What happens when you let the other in?

Homework

Read Sherwood Anderson’s “Death in the Woods” — one click from the Session 10 box below. It is a short story, not a memoir, but it explicitly performs revision: the narrator tells the same story twice. Read all the way through.
Optional: mark a memoir paragraph of your own Y/O, using the Double Voice Worksheet above.

Coming up next Sunday — Session 10

Revision — How Writers Actually Re-See. Our last full session. We will look at the difference between editing (fixing sentences) and revision (re-seeing the whole), and we will try, in the room, the discipline of cutting a page of our own writing by 25 percent and then another 25 percent — and seeing what survives.

Double Voice Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Apply to a memoir paragraph of your own. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Paste a memoir paragraph here.
Mark each sentence Y (younger voice, lived experience) or O (older voice, reflection).
What does the older voice supply that the younger could not? ____________________
What does the younger voice supply that the older could not? ____________________
One sentence I could rewrite in the opposite voice: ____________________

Session Ten · Unit III — Memoir

Revision — How Writers Actually Re-See

Sunday, July 19, 2026

Main Points of the Lesson

Revision is not editing. Editing fixes sentences. Revision re-sees the whole.
The early draft is for the writer. The middle draft is where the writer learns what the piece actually is. The late draft is for the reader.
A four-pass sequence: read for boredom/confusion/interest → structure → scene-by-scene → sentences.
Most writers reverse the order — start with sentences, never reach structure. The result is a polished surface over an unstable foundation.
The discipline of cutting: cut by 25%, then another 25%, and notice what survives.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Sherwood Anderson, “Death in the Woods” — read full story (public domain). Anderson was Hemingway’s teacher and Raymond Carver’s acknowledged foundation. This story explicitly turns on revision: the narrator tells the same story twice, each time finding more of what the story actually is. It is one of the great meditations on re-seeing.

After Our Discussion — Critical Reception

Biblioklept on Sherwood Anderson’s “Death in the Woods” — close reading

In-Class Practice

Take a single page you have written for this course. Cut it by 25%. Then cut another 25%. We’ll discuss what survived — and why.

What happens with this: stays in your notebook. Two or three volunteers may share what the cut taught them — what they lost, what they were surprised to keep. The page itself is yours; nothing is collected.

Discussion Questions

What is the difference between editing and revision in your own working practice?
In Anderson’s “Death in the Woods,” the narrator tells the same story twice. What changes the second time? What does the re-telling reveal that the first telling could not?
What is the hardest thing about cutting? Where do you resist?
If you read your draft tomorrow, what would you give yourself permission to remove?

Homework

Read the second chapter of Thoreau’s Walden — “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” — linked in the Farewell box below. Read it slowly. It is the closing text of our course.
Bring one sentence to next Sunday’s Farewell — any sentence, from anything you wrote during the ten weeks. Just one. We will go around the circle.

Coming up next Sunday — Farewell

The Writing Life. Our closing meditation. We read Thoreau together — the most famous American sentence about choosing a life — and each of us reads aloud one sentence from anything we wrote during the course. Coffee or tea if we can arrange it. A slow ending.

Four-Pass Revision Worksheet — for your private notebook

Copy into a Word document. Run a piece of your own writing through all four passes. This stays in your private notebook — never collected, never read aloud unless you choose.

Pass 1: Read whole, aloud if possible. Where did I get bored? __________ Confused? __________ Interested? __________
Pass 2 — Structure: Are the parts in the right order? What is missing? What is redundant? __________
Pass 3 — Scene by scene: What can be cut? What needs more? __________
Pass 4 — Sentences: Three sentences I can shorten: __________
The Cut: Cut the piece by 25%. Then by another 25%. What survived? __________

Farewell

The Writing Life

Sunday, July 26, 2026

Main Points of the Closing Meditation

What it means to live as a person who writes.
Practice, reading habits, the long view.
A reading life sustains a writing life. Notice what you admire and figure out how it was done.
Read more poetry than you think you should. Read older books than the bestseller list. Read translations. Read writers who write nothing like you.
A bookshelf is a long-term investment in your own voice.

Reading for Class — Click to Open

Henry David Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” (Chapter 2 of Walden) — Project Gutenberg (public domain). The classic American meditation on the chosen life of attention — what it costs to live deliberately, and why a writing life is one form of that choosing.

In-Class Practice

Each person reads aloud one sentence from something they wrote during the course. Just one sentence. Around the circle. Applause is fine. Bring tissues.

What happens with this: the one sentence is shared aloud with the room as the closing act of our ten Sundays. Nothing is collected. Nothing is recorded. The room listens; the room thanks you; the room turns the page.

The work of telling is one of the most generous things a person can do.

Quick Links

All Course Readings

Every reading available online — click in class to open immediately on your laptop. All linked texts are freely available from public-domain or open-access sources.

Unit I — The Short Story

Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants” — Wikisource (Session 1) A young couple wait at a Spanish train station, talking around a decision neither will name. Hemingway’s short masterpiece of the iceberg method — seven-eighths of the meaning lives below the surface of the dialogue.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 2) A woman is confined to an upstairs room by a husband who calls it a rest cure, and the wallpaper begins, slowly, to speak to her. A short masterpiece of unreliable narration in which every one of the seven questions has a clear answer — and the gap between what the narrator understands and what the reader understands is the story.
Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay” — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 3) A day at a New Zealand seaside summer colony, moving fluidly between many lives and points of view. A textbook of how scene and summary alternate to make ordinary life feel monumental. (Alice Munro called Mansfield her teacher.)
Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog” — Project Gutenberg (Session 4) A married banker on holiday in Yalta begins an affair he assumes will be brief, and discovers, slowly and against his will, that he is in love. The greatest short story ever written about characters who do not know what they want until the story tells them.

After Our Discussions — Critical Reception

Open after you’ve formed your own response to each story.

On Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” — a library guide to critical articles
On Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” — U.S. National Library of Medicine exhibition
On Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” — Dana Gioia’s essay

Unit II — Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art” — Poetry Foundation (Session 5) A villanelle whose first line — “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” — is undone, beautifully and devastatingly, by the poem that follows. The form (refrain, repetition) is the argument.
Robert Frost, “Birches” — Poetry Foundation (Session 5) A New England meditation on a boy climbing birch trees and an adult longing to escape the weight of earth, ending in one of American poetry’s most-quoted lines: “Earth’s the right place for love.”
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” — Poetry Foundation (Sessions 5 & 7) Sixteen words. A red wheelbarrow, rainwater, white chickens, and a claim about what depends on the act of seeing. A century of readers have found it inexhaustible.
Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” — Library of Congress (Sessions 5 & 7) A grasshopper washes its face on the speaker’s hand, and the poem ends with the question that has followed readers home for decades: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Seamus Heaney, “Digging” — Poetry Foundation (Session 6) The Irish poet listens to his father digging potatoes outside his window and decides what to do with the pen between his fingers. A poem of inherited labor, written voice, and vocation.
Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise” — Academy of American Poets (Session 6) A small list of ordinary mornings — getting up, walking the dog, eating cereal — with two words returning: It might have been otherwise. Quiet, contingent, devastating.
Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” — Poetry Foundation (Sessions 6 & 7) A defiant lyric “I” addresses the reader directly: she has shaped a life out of what “had no model” for it. Fourteen lines, no capital letters, immense rhetorical force.

After Our Discussions — Critical Reception

On Bishop’s “One Art” — an analysis of the villanelle’s form
On Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” — Poetry Foundation essay
On Heaney’s “Digging” — Poetry Foundation poet page

Unit III — Memoir

Frederick Douglass, opening chapter of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 8) One of the founding texts of American memoir. Douglass opens with the line every memoirist has learned from: “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.” The older voice frames; the younger voice supplies; both speak together on the page.
Mary Antin, opening of The Promised Land — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 9) Antin, who immigrated from the Pale of Settlement in Russia to Boston as a child, opens her 1912 memoir with the famous declaration: “I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over.” The older voice and the younger voice speak openly side by side.
Booker T. Washington, opening of Up from Slavery — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 9) Washington was born a slave on a Virginia plantation. The opening of his 1901 memoir is famously restrained — the older voice almost entirely withheld — making the boy’s experience do its own work. The opposite craft choice from Antin.
Sherwood Anderson, “Death in the Woods” — Project Gutenberg (public domain) (Session 10) An old woman is found frozen to death in the woods. The narrator tries to tell what happened, fails, and then tells it again — each telling closer to what the story actually is. A great American meditation on the work of re-seeing.

After Our Discussions — Critical Reception

Library of America on The Promised Land — on Mary Antin’s place in American memoir
National Park Service on Up from Slavery — historical context
Biblioklept on “Death in the Woods” — close reading

Farewell

Henry David Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” (Chapter 2 of Walden) — Project Gutenberg (public domain) The chapter that contains the most famous American sentence about choosing a life: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” A meditation on what the writing life shares with every other deliberately chosen life.

Required & Recommended Books

Required: Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway (any edition; used copies $7–$15)
Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
On Writing — Stephen King
The Art of Memoir — Mary Karr
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry — Jane Hirshfield
The Situation and the Story — Vivian Gornick

For Your Reference

Literary Terms Glossary

Terms we will use across the three units. Working definitions — meant to be useful at the desk, not exhaustive.

Narrative & Fiction

Scene: A passage that puts the reader in the room. Time slows; dialogue is heard; objects are seen; small gestures matter.
Summary: A passage that compresses time. Events are reported rather than dramatized. The opposite mode from scene.
Character: Not a description of a person — a want with a body around it.
Desire: What the character wants. The engine of narrative. Can be hidden from the character.
Obstacle: What stands in the way of desire. External (circumstance, another person) or internal (fear, self-deception).
Stakes: What the character will lose if they fail. Need not be life and death, but must be real to the character.
Turn: The moment in a story when something is different from what it was before. Without a turn, the story drifts.
Recognition: What the character understands at the end that they did not at the beginning. Need not be articulated.
Selection: The writer’s central act: what to include, what to leave out, what to put first, what to dwell on.

Voice, POV & the Reader’s Trust

Voice: The recognizable texture of a narrator on the page: diction, syntax, rhythm, stance toward the material.
Point of View: The position from which a story is told: who sees, who knows, who speaks.
Narrative Distance: The felt nearness of narrator to character — from inside the skull to high overhead. A dial, not a switch.
First Person: An “I” tells the story. Intimate and limited to what the speaker can know.
Close Third: Third-person narration that stays inside one character’s perception.
Omniscient: A narrator who can move freely among characters and know what each is thinking.
Free Indirect Style: Third-person narration that briefly absorbs a character’s phrasing and judgment without quotation marks.
Reliability: The degree to which the reader can trust the narrator’s account. Unreliability is a craft choice, not a flaw.
Disclosure: What the narrator chooses to reveal, withhold, or delay. The engine of pacing and tension.
Filtering Words: Words like saw, heard, felt, noticed that add distance by placing perception between reader and event.

Poetry

Image: A concrete sensory detail — seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled — that carries weight beyond itself.
Line: The basic unit of rhythm in poetry. In prose, the sentence; in poetry, the line.
Line Break: The most powerful piece of punctuation a poet has. Decides what the eye lingers on and where the breath rests.
Enjambment: A line break that runs the sentence across without punctuation, creating tension between line and syntax.
Lyric “I”: The constructed speaker of a poem. Not the same as the poet — a position chosen and shaped.
Compression: Density of meaning per unit of language. Not shortness. Comes from precision of image, economy of line, and trust in the reader.
Concrete Noun: A noun for a thing the senses can find. Concrete nouns are how poems mean.
Abstraction: Language about ideas rather than things (loss, hope, grief). Necessary in moderation; deadly in excess.

Memoir

Memoir: The shaping of a slice of a life into literature. Not autobiography (the chronicle of a whole life).
Situation: What happened — the events of the memoir. The raw material.
Story: What it means — the meaning the writer makes of the events. (After Vivian Gornick.)
Double Voice: The two voices speaking together on the memoir page: the younger self living through, and the older self looking back.
Truth of Memory: The truth of what the moment felt like and what it has continued to mean — not the same as the truth of fact.
Reflection: The pattern, the meaning, the recognition the older voice supplies. Distinct from scene.

Revision & the Writing Life

Revision: Re-seeing the whole. Distinct from editing.
Editing: Fixing sentences at the local level. The last stage of work, not the first.
Early Draft: For the writer. A way of finding what is there.
Middle Draft: Where the writer learns what the piece actually is.
Late Draft: For the reader. Now the work can be polished.
The Cut: The disciplined removal of what does not earn its place. The single most useful revision move.

Take-Home Essay

A Reading Companion

A reference essay for the salon — not a textbook, but a set of notes from an experienced teacher, organized so you can return to any section between sessions.

To Save Your Own Copy Select the Companion text below with your mouse, press Ctrl + C (Windows) or ⌘ + C (Mac), open a blank Word document, and press Ctrl + V (or ⌘ + V) to paste. Save and print — it’s yours to mark up.

Part One — Reading Fiction

What Is a Story?

A story is shaped experience that means something. Three words carry the whole definition: shaped, experience, means. Each is doing specific work.

Experience. Something happens. Not necessarily something dramatic — a conversation, a moment of recognition, a choice made or not made. Without something happening, you have description or meditation, both of which are fine, but neither of which is a story. The simplest diagnostic question for any draft: What happens? If you cannot answer that in one sentence, the draft is probably not yet a story. It may be becoming one; keep going.

Shaped. The writer’s central task is selection. Everything in the raw material is clay. The sculptor Constantin Brancusi said that what he was doing was “finding the statue inside the stone.” The writer’s job is similar: finding the story inside the experience.

Means. A story leaves the reader changed — not necessarily enlightened, not necessarily consoled, but changed by an inch. Frank O’Connor said a short story should leave the reader “with an impossibility on their hands.” Eudora Welty called the short story a moment in which “the heart is laid bare.” Different generations, the same observation: a story has consequence.

Scene & Summary

The two great modes of narrative prose. Scene puts the reader in the room. Summary covers ground. Most weak drafts are too much summary, or too much scene without selection. The craft is in the pacing.

Character & Desire

A character is not a description of a person. A character is a want with a body around it. Without desire, you have a portrait. Without obstacle, you have wish fulfillment. Without consequence, you have anecdote.

Part Two — Reading Poetry

What Poetry Does That Prose Cannot

Poetry is not prose with line breaks. It is a different way of making meaning. Where prose narrates, poetry distills. If prose is a path, poetry is a stone you stop and turn over in your hand.

The Image

The image is the basic unit of poetic meaning. Mary Oliver does not write about the natural world. She writes the grasshopper, washing its face. The grasshopper is the image; the meditation on attention and mortality is what the image carries.

The Line

The line break decides what the eye lingers on, where the breath rests, where the meaning turns.

Voice & the Lyric “I”

The “I” of a poem is not the same as the poet. It is a constructed voice — a position the poet chooses to speak from.

Compression

Compression is density of meaning per unit of language. It comes from precision of image, economy of line, and trust in the reader.

Part Three — Reading Memoir

What Memoir Is, and Is Not

Memoir is not autobiography. It is the shaping of a slice of life into literature. Vivian Gornick: the situation is what happened; the story is what it means.

The Double Structure

The hardest skill in memoir is the double voice. The younger voice supplies the texture, the immediacy, the not-yet-knowing. The older voice supplies the reflection, the pattern, the meaning the younger self could not yet see.

Memory & the Truth of Memoir

Memoir is committed to the truth of memory, which is not the same as the truth of fact. Be honest about that.

The Ethics of Writing About Real People

Write as if they will read it. Many will. This does not mean writing nothing critical. It means writing nothing you could not defend to the person.
Distinguish the person from the character. The character on the page is your selection from the whole human being.
The essential question: What is this for? The reader can tell when a piece is written for the work’s sake and when it is written for revenge or self-display.

Part Four — On Revision & the Writing Life

Revision Is Re-Seeing

Revision is not editing. Editing fixes sentences. Revision re-sees the whole. The early draft is for the writer. The middle draft is where the writer learns what the piece actually is. The late draft is for the reader.

A Reading Life Sustains a Writing Life

Every writer who has lasted at the work has lasted because they read constantly, widely, and with a writer’s attention. Read more poetry than you think you should. Read older books than the bestseller list. Read translations. Read writers who write nothing like you. A bookshelf is a long-term investment in your own voice.

A Closing Word

You have come to this room because you want to tell. Across the ten Sundays of this course, we read fiction, poetry, and memoir not as separate disciplines but as three faces of the same human work: shaping experience so that someone else can recognize it.

Whatever you write between now and the Farewell on July 26, write it with care. Bring your questions. Bring your drafts. Bring yourself.

— James F. Mulhern —

Make Your Own Packet

Print Your Materials at Home

No physical handouts are distributed in class — everything you need is right here on this site. Use the steps below to make your own printed packet in Microsoft Word.

How to Copy a Section into Word

Find the section you want. Use the navigation bar at the top of this page — for example, click Syllabus, Sessions, Reading Companion, or Glossary.
Highlight the text. Click and hold at the start of the section, then drag down to the end. The text will be highlighted in blue. Release the mouse.
Copy it. Press Ctrl + C on Windows, or ⌘ + C on a Mac.
Open Word. Start a new blank document.
Paste. Press Ctrl + V on Windows, or ⌘ + V on a Mac. The text will appear in your document.
Optional — paste as plain text. If you want to drop the colors and fonts and use Word’s own formatting, after pasting click the small clipboard icon that appears and choose Keep Text Only. Or paste directly with Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) / ⌘ + Shift + V (Mac).
Save and print. Save your document, then print as usual.

What Most Students Print

The Syllabus — for your binder.
The Reading Companion — about fifteen pages of supplementary craft material.
The Literary Terms Glossary — useful at the desk.
The worksheet inside each session — copy these one at a time, before the relevant Sunday.

A Tip for the Worksheets

After pasting a worksheet into Word, press Enter after each prompt to give yourself two or three blank lines to write on. Or change the line spacing to Double from Word’s Home tab so you have room to answer by hand.

If You Don’t Have Word

Any word processor will do — Google Docs, Apple Pages, LibreOffice Writer. The same copy-paste-print steps apply.

A Brief Hello

About Me

I’m a Philadelphia writer and teacher. I’ve taught writing for many years, and these days I write and publish full time. I run a small literary press, Silver Current Press, which is where the worksheets and Reading Companion for this course are prepared.

What I care about, after all this time, is the same thing I cared about at the start: how a piece of writing earns the reader’s trust. That’s what these ten Sundays are about. I’m grateful you’re willing to spend them with me.

Contact

Email: jamesfmulhern@gmail.com
Author website: authorjamesmulhern.com

A Note on the Course Materials

The worksheets and Reading Companion for the course are put together under Silver Current Press, the small press I run. If you’d ever like to see what the press is up to, it lives at authorjamesmulhern.com.

A Closing Note

This course is built on a single conviction: that the work of telling — across genres, across forms — is one of the most human acts there is. Four Sundays we read fiction. Three Sundays we read poetry. Three Sundays we read memoir. And on the eleventh Sunday, the Farewell, we take our leave and turn back toward the writing life that waits for us.

I am glad you are here.