Arts Council features fall literary programs

   In its upcoming fall semester, The Arts Council of Princeton will host two unusual literary programs — one engaging participants in active writing and one centered in reading and discussion.
   The first, "Guided Writing Group," will continue to meet Monday mornings during the new fall session. Originally begun as a guided memoir writing course last fall, this popular program expanded to an informal writing group and will continue as a guided writing group this fall. New members are welcome.
   The course facilitator, Dr. Anne Waldron Neumann, a writer and longtime member of several writers’ groups, believes that hearing what others have written will help individuals with their own writing.
   Moreover, the struggles writers encounter in their own work might be instructive to others who are just starting out, facing writers’ block, or pondering how to get their writing published.
   This eight-week course is geared to individuals who have started writing or are about to start and want to read their work in a supportive environment. In a relaxed and informal setting, participants will be guided in writing clear, sharp and effective prose, whether fiction or nonfiction, book, short story or essay. Poetry is also welcomed.
   The group will meet from 10-11:30 a.m. Monday mornings. The new session will begin Monday, Sept. 10 and runs through Oct. 29. The cost is $35.
   The second literature-based program, "Literature Against Apartheid," is an eight-week course that will introduce participants to important South African writers and compare and contrast how black and white authors address the same political struggle against apartheid.
   Course instructor Dr. Neumann, also an expert on South Africa literature, is convinced that "understanding the literature of another culture can help us understand our own better; specifically, reading the literature of opposition to apartheid provides perspective on our own experience of race and racism in this country." The readings will serve as a springboard for examining personal and group reactions to the universal issues of race and discrimination.
   In a relaxed and informal setting participants will read excerpts from the works of South African writers Njabulo Ndebele, Nadine Gordimer, Percy Mtwa and J.M. Coetzee, as well as Moses Dlamini’s full-length memoir of imprisonment on Robben Island.
   The course will also include a visit by Kassahum Checole, publisher of Africa World Press in Trenton, who will discuss the Dlamini memoir and the rare pleasures of publishing African literature in the United States.
   "Literature Against Apartheid" will meet from 8-9:30 p.m. Wednesdays, beginning Sept. 12. There will be no classes on Sept. 26 and Oct. 1. The cost is $150; $135 for members.
   The Arts Council is located at 102 Witherspoon St. in downtown Princeton. For more information or to pre-register for either class, call (609) 924-8777.