Landscapes of Feeling w/ Leslie Jamison

This class will examine how we write about places that are charged with emotion, landscapes both remembered and imagined—ranging from neighborhoods to mountain ranges, seaside villages to prison facilities, theme parks to bedrooms. How can these places become prompts and catalysts and fissures opening onto vast subterranean caverns of feeling? We'll be exploring how emotionally charged sites and spaces can serve not only as a launching-off point for narratives but as a way to structure and interrogate our emotional experiences. In addition to discussing published work, we'll be examining various literary maps and generating maps of our own.


BIO

I was born in Washington DC and grew up in Los Angeles. Since then, I've lived in Iowa, Nicaragua, New Haven, and (currently) Brooklyn. I've worked as a baker, an office temp, an innkeeper, a tutor, a juice barista, a GAP clerk, and a medical actor. Every one of these was a world; they're still in me. These days I teach at the Columbia University MFA program, where I direct the nonfiction concentration.

My new book, a memoir called Splinters, comes out in February 2024. It’s been a journey, as I’ve always found February the trickiest month to spell correctly. Please email the amazing Lena (see below!) if you’d like an advance copy. I've also written two essay collections—The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn—a critical memoir, The Recovering, and a novel, The Gin Closet. I’ve also written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer.