Epistolary writing is letter writing--as in written correspondence. In this course, through reading and writing assignments, we will investigate the epistolary essay as a borrowed form—a soliloquy, a collaboration, a protest, a confession—and a tradition in its own right. We will write postcard essays and open letters, send fan letters and mail art, keep pen pals and hope a message in a bottle washes up on our shores. We will encounter diarists and crosshatched letters, witnesses and correspondents, letters that should be written but never sent, and the uncertainty of any letter reaching its destination or getting a reply. We will work with intimacy, distance, the “I,” and the second person to ask: Who do we write to? Which is to say, we will write our way into a new understanding of the impact of epistolary essay in particular, and the impulse to essay generally. Featuring site visits to the post office, the campus mail room, and library Special Collections & Archives.

Texts include:

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – “The Answer”

Andrea Morningstar – Who Put the “Pistol” In “Epistolary?”

Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet

Victoria Chang – Dear Memory

Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us – Ed. Colleen Kinder

Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl

Ta-Nehisi Coates – Between the World and Me

Martin Luther King, Jr. – “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Ear Hustle – “Catch a Kite”

Kisha Llewelyn Schlegel – “Dick, About Your Heart”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil & Ross Gay – Lace & Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens

Giorgia Lupi & Stefanie Posavec – Dear Data

Joe Wenderoth – Letters to Wendy’s

Hannah Brencher – If You Find This Letter