Reading Like a Writer: World of Wonders

Instructor: Leah McNaughton Lederman
Dates: 4 Wednesdays: September 07, 14, 21, 28 2022
Location: Facebook Group

*The first 8 registrations will receive a free book. Please include the best mailing address at checkout*

In this writing group, we will be reading World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil through the lens of a writer! World of Wonders is a book of essays, so discussions and writing prompts will be guided through selected stories with an eye toward creative nonfiction writing. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to join but any genre is welcome. Sometimes the best way to grow your writing skills is to study a different genre.

You are invited to a private Facebook group (link will be provided after registration) to talk about World of Wonders throughout the month of September. Every Wednesday, the group presenter from IWC will post questions about the book with space for writers to write responses. There will also be writing prompts based on the selected readings, meant to inspire authors to pen their own poems, stories, and essays. The weekly writing prompts are in response to some of the essays, themes, word choice, etc. in the selected readings from the book. In the Facebook group, participants will be invited to post their writings for response, feedback and conversation with peers.

Notes:
-Cost: $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers
-Members: please be sure to login to your membership account for the discount!
-This class is asynchronous; respond to the prompts as you can!

About the book:
As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

“What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

About the author:
Aimee Nezhukumatathil (neh-ZOO / KOO-mah / tah-TILL) is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World Of Wonders: In Praise Of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At The Drive-In Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

This program is sponsored by the Indiana Humanities One State / One Story Community Read grant