Outline for Course

Story of Your Life

Here

You will find a basic outline for the course and its activities here.

One of my favourite short stories by the great sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, and the story the wonderful movie Arrival is based on. “Story of Your Life” poses many of the same questions Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here does: how would your life change if you could experience all time at once? Click here to download it for study.

Here is a graphic novel by Richard McGuire that reminds me that the places I inhabit haven’t always been mine, won’t always be mine. I think the book gives us as writers a vital connection with the world beyond the scale of our own lives, and in that way can help us help readers understand climate change more deeply and personally. Think about the places you’ve highlighted on your map—the events of your life. What other memories might inhabit those places? What other events, in the past and the future?

Books We Love:

• Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owen

• The Crystal Drop, by Monica Hughes

• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

• Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden

• The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

• Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts

• Collapse, by Jarod Diamond

• The Battle for Jesus, by Simon Lawson

• The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin

• The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams

• Pump Six and Other Stories, by Pablo Bacigalupi