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***After class at 2pm, please join us at the FWR as Rebecca presents her newest book Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility. The reading is FREE and open to the public, with book sales by MALAPROP'S***

Class meets Saturday May 2, 2026, 11am-1pm. Though Elizabeth Bishop claimed, in her famously ironic “One Art,” that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master,” the art of writing about loss can be challenging. How do we shape the seemingly inexpressible, complicated, personal yet universal experience of grief and loss in a way that invites the reader in? In this multi-genre class, we will discuss advanced reading selections, identify approaches and techniques, and respond to in-class writing prompts.

REBECCA MCCLANAHAN is the author of twelve books, most recently Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility and In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays. Her poetry, nonfiction, and fiction have appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, The Sun. Recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Wood Prize from Poetry, and the Glasgow Award in Nonfiction, she has also received a MacDowell Colony fellowship, four literary fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, and the N.C. Governor's Award for Excellence in Education. She teaches in the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program.