All upcoming Authors, Books, & Writing programs

What makes a writer’s space so fascinating? Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s reflections on the importance of space for creativity, author Katie da Cunha Lewin examines how writers have worked everywhere from quiet garden rooms and shared family tables to bustling cafés and buses. She offers vivid portraits of memorable creative spaces, including Woolf’s tranquil room at Monk’s House, Ernest Hemingway’s Paris cafés, and Maya Angelou’s deliberately bare hotel rooms.

Oxford’s golden spires have long doubled as the perfect setting for murder—at least on the page. Mystery writers from Dorothy L. Sayers to Colin Dexter have turned the city’s colleges, quads, and traditions into fertile ground for ingenious crimes and eccentric detectives. The same atmosphere has fueled beloved TV dramas like “Inspector Morse,” “Endeavour” and “Inspector Lewis.” Author Daniel Stashower dives into this rich tradition of Oxford mysteries, while actor Scott Sedar brings classic scenes to life through dramatic readings. Enjoy an evening of locked rooms, cryptic clues, and enigmatic detectives. As Lord Peter Wimsey might have said, it promises to be “a bally good time.”

Much Ado About Nothing (1598–99) remains one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and frequently performed comedies, featuring such memorable characters as the witty, bickering Benedick and Beatrice and the more straightforward Hero and Claudio. Literature professor Joseph Luzzi explores Shakespeare’s lyrical language, narrative techniques, and representations of love, honor, and marriage, among other key themes. Luzzi also discusses how this riveting comedy fits into the broader arc of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright.

Shakespeare’s sonnets go deeply—with wisdom, sympathy, rage, and sly humor—into the heart of countless human struggles and joys, as readers have kept discovering for more than 400 years. Through close readings of a dozen poems, Robert N. Watson, a noted Shakespearian scholar, author, and poet, examines emotions ranging from nostalgia to depression, sexual desire to post-coital regret, and the art of writing a better love letter to the challenges of aging.

What makes the best speeches and writings stand the test of time? What can be learned from them about how to write better ourselves? Ward Farnsworth, professor at the University of Texas School of Law and author of a series of books on English rhetoric and style, shows how small choices regarding the selection of words, the arrangement of sentences, and the creation of a cadence can put force into writing and speech.

In 2011, staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History discovered a hair, light red in color and possibly human, between the pages of an unpublished manuscript by Thomas Jefferson. That hair sparked an unprecedented scientific quest: Could advances in modern genomics recover Jefferson’s DNA and finally resolve the enduring question of the paternity of the children of Sally Hemings, one of hundreds of African Americans enslaved at Monticello? Richard Kurin, Smithsonian distinguished scholar, reveals the decade-and-a-half-long genomic investigation that settles the historical record.

Shakespeare’s tragedies, filled with ambition, love, betrayal, and devastating choices, have captivated audiences for centuries. In a full-day seminar, Shakespeare scholar and historian Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger considers what makes these plays so compelling: the way he takes us into the mind of his characters, the complexity of their experiences, and the language that has become part of our discourse. From Antony and Cleopatra to Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar to King Lear, she explores the tragedies by considering their place in Shakespeare’s time and the ways they continue to resonate with audiences today.

The late 19th century in New York City was an era of exquisite mansions, palatial public buildings, and beautiful parks—magnificent markers of the Gilded Age. Yet the city was a study in dichotomies whose contrasting facets were noted in the writings of Edith Wharton and Henry James and exposed in the photographs of Jacob Riis. George Scheper, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, surveys this cultural panorama. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Discover the power of reflective writing guided by teaching artist and museum educator, Mary Hall Surface. Inspired by works of art by Hudson River landscape painter Jasper Francis Cropsey and poetry by Mary Oliver, explore the lessons that the season of autumn offers when we slow down, look closely, and reflect. Designed for writers of all levels, the workshop invites participants to look outward at paintings and poetry and to look inward through writing.

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) has been alternately diminished, reclaimed, and celebrated, reflecting broader debates about what it means to be French. Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was of mixed-race heritage, and his experiences with racism further complicated his status. Historian Eric Martone traces how Dumas’ reception has evolved from his century through the present.