In this seminar, we will read selections from Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City, Toni Cade Bambara's Gorilla, My Love, Tommy Orange's There, There, and Grace Paley's Collected Stories to understand how each author animates place to create deeper meaning. We will also explore how stay-at-home orders made us think about the influence of place on our own psychic spaces. In this four-session seminar, finally, you will have the opportunity to write about the important places in your own life, using creative prompts inspired by our reading.

October 6: Stuart Dybeck, Coasts of Chicago
October 27: Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City
November 17: Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla My Love
December 8:  Tommy Orange, There, There

Claire Jimenez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York. She is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories, which won the Library's New York City Book Awards Hornblower Award for 2019. Jimenez is a PhD student in English with a concentration in ethnic studies and digital humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She received her MFA from Vanderbilt University. Recently, she was a research fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. Currently, she is an assistant fiction editor at Prairie Schooner, and she has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books and many other publications.