Four Wednesdays: March 2, 9, 16, 23 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST Online
Everything Tillie Olsen wrote became a classic almost immediately. “She can spend no word that is not the right one,” wrote Dorothy Parker. With Tillie’s short story collection of four stories in 1954, themes important to women suddenly widened the possibilities for American fiction writers. Themes of the hopes and frustration of immigration, the gnarled roots of a long marriage, the passion and anguishes of motherhood--- were never written before with such resonance and power from a female point of view. Soon taught in most colleges, Tillie earned honorary degrees and awards from the American Academy for Arts and Letters. Her work is on tape at The Library of Congress.
In four one-and-a-half hour sessions, we will examine one of the four short stories now considered American classics, and do a writing workshop exercise based on techniques in that story that Tillie pioneered.
Four Wednesdays: March 2, 9, 16, 23 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST Online
Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works by Tillie Olsen (9780803245778)
Joyce Winslow, Assoc. Prof. of English Literature at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, met Tillie Olsen at the MacDowell Colony and was mentored and befriended by her for ten years until Tillie’s death. Winslow has been published in The Best American Short Stories anthology, won the Allen Ginsberg Award for poetry, the Raymond Carver Award and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for fiction. She teaches Olsen as an “insider,” privy to Tillie’s own insights and descriptions.
REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.
