On Writing

March 27, 2026, 12–1pm  | RECORDING FORTHCOMING

This conversation featureed V.V. Ganeshananthan (University of Minnesota) and Kate Levin (USC) on the topic of “sentences,” hosted by Sarah Mesle (USC).

Description: What knowledge, what artistry, can a sentence hold? Whose rules must it follow? What kinds of personhood can it express, and how? How does genre shape what a sentence can be? This event brings together two professors and activists who have considered how to craft sentences that bridge the gap between creative and researched writing. We’ll talk about sentences we love, sentences we’re proud of, and sentences that changed what we think a sentence can do. But we’ll also consider “sentence” in a different, juridical, sense — as a judgement, a punishment. We’ll ask: how does remembering the double meaning of “sentence” help us see the overlap between our writing lives and our obligations to justice in the world?

V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night (winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the 2024 Carol Shields Prize, the 2023 Asian Prize, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and an NPR Book of the Year) and Love Marriage (longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post). Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and professor of English. Since 2017, she has co-hosted Literary Hub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.

Kate Levin is Associate Professor (Teaching) of Writing at the University of Southern California, where she is co-founder and co-director of the Dornsife Prison Education Project. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Nation, and a variety of literary journals.

April 10, 2026, 12–1pm  | RECORDING FORTHCOMING

This conversation featured Daniel Immerwahr (Northwestern University) and Antonio Coronel Elefano (USC) on the topic of “evidence,” hosted by Sarah Mesle (USC).

Description: We’re writing in a moment when clear standards of evidence are more important than ever. But knowing that evidence matters doesn’t mean it’s easy for writers to understand how to use it — especially when political and technological changes pit different kinds of arguments and evidence against each other. So, it’s more important than ever to ask: how do you know that a claim is true? How do you prove it? This event brings together writers with training in different fields — legal studies, history, creative writing, journalism, and literary studies — to ask: for you, what kinds of evidence count as proof? How do you make your case in a courtroom, in literary criticism, in history scholarship, in a book review, in a novel? We’ll talk about our own experiences of finding, arranging, and evaluating evidence — and we’ll share our ideas about explaining different forms of evidence to students.

Antonio Elefano joined USC’s Writing faculty in the fall of 2014. Before coming to USC, he was a corporate litigator in New York City and a writing fellow/visiting assistant professor at the University of Houston. A graduate of Yale Law School and the author of Legal Writing for the Undergraduate from Wolters Kluwer/Aspen, he is the Writing Program’s legal writing specialist, teaching WRIT 340: Moot Court, WRIT 320: Competitive Moot Court (focused on oral argumentation), WRIT 340: Legal Writing and WRIT 440: Advanced Legal Writing. He is the faculty advisor for Southern California Moot Court (which in 2024 was named the top school in the country in appellate brief writing and in 2025 won the national championship in brief writing), Phi Alpha Delta (USC’s pre-law fraternity), and the Survivor Support Community at USC. In 2024, he was awarded the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching given at USC. That same year, he received his second USC Mentoring Award for Mentoring Undergraduates (his first was in 2019). Elefano is also a fiction writer whose stories have been published in The Los Angeles Review, 236 and The Journal. In August 2014, his story “Italy” was one of Buzzfeed’s “29 Short Stories You Need to Read in Your Twenties.”

Daniel Immerwahr (Ph.D., Berkeley, 2011) is Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. He is the author of Thinking Small (Harvard, 2015) and How to Hide an Empire (FSG, 2019), both of which have won scholarly awards. Immerwahr is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and his essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Harper’s, The New Republic, and the New York Review of Books, among other places. He is writing a fire history of the United States.

April 23, 2026, 12–1pm  | RECORDING FORTHCOMING

This conversation featured Elisa Tamarkin (UC Berkeley) and Jesse Alemán (University of New Mexico) on the topic of “endings,” hosted by Sarah Mesle (USC).

Description: Sometimes, the world gives us clear endings: the time runs out on the game clock, a political term concludes, victory or defeat is declared. But in writing, endings are often blurry and complicated. When are you done writing? What should your conclusion say? What last line can drive home your point — and how can you let go of everything that a piece of writing might say but didn’t?  In their recent books, the two writers featured in this conversation describe political events — such as the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and the Vietnam War — which ended at a specific time but continue to shape our lives today. These events show us that even in the world, endings are often less clear than they seem. Together, we’ll discuss strategies for reaching the end of a piece of writing, even as the world we’re describing continues to evolve.

Jesse Alemán is a professor of English and Presidential Teaching Fellow at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches nineteenth-century American and US Latinx literary and cultural histories. He is the author of Latinx Civil Wars: The Formation of Latinidad in an Age of Revolution and Rebellion (NYU Press 2026). He has also published two co-edited collections, Empire and the Literature of Sensation and The Latino Nineteenth Century, and he reprinted The Woman in Battle: The Civil War Narrative of Loreta Janeta Velazquez. He has over two dozen articles and essays in venues such as Aztlán, American Literary History, and the PMLA, and his co-edited special issue on “Trans Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century Americas” is slated for the upcoming 13.1 release of Trans Studies Quarterly.

Elisa Tamarkin is Professor and Katharine Bixby Hotchkis Chair in English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon (University of Chicago Press, 2026) on the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the end of both foreign correspondence and the nation’s city newspapers. Her previous books, Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance and Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America, were also published by University of Chicago Press.

March 29, 2022, 11am-12:30pm

The “short book” is now a trend in academia and beyond.  New series devoted to this form publish monographs or long essays that are about a third the length of a traditional book, and academic and trade presses alike advertise these new, concise presentations as increasing “accessibility” and circulation. It makes sense, given the insistent demands most of us face for our attention. But the short book has an aesthetic and a function all its own. This panel will look at the short book on its own terms, asking what brevity offers both writers and readers that longer, more traditional books may not. We will also ask what the short book could offer: how it is a form that we can continue to develop, what role concision (and accessibility) plays in our scholarship, and how the shorter monograph can contribute to the academic profiles of those who seek tenure and promotion. We will be joined by a combination of publishers, editors, and writers who work in this area, and brief presentations from our panelists will be followed by a general Q&A

Speakers:

• Monica Huerta, Assistant professor of English and American Studies, Princeton University; Series Editor of Writing Matters at Duke University Press
• Alison Kinney, Assistant Professor of Writing, The New School
• Sarah Mesle, USC Associate Professor (Teaching) of Writing; Senior Editor at Large, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the editor of LARB channel Avidly and the NYU short book series Avidly Reads
• Christopher Schaberg, Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Center for Editing and Publishing, Loyola University New Orleans; Editor, Object Lessons

Moderated by Emily Hodgson Anderson, Professor of English and College Dean of Undergraduate Education, and David Ulin, Associate Professor of the Practice of English.

November 16, 2021, 12pm-1pm | RECORDING

Definitions of the essay are vague and various. It may be formal or informal; lyrical or critical, long or short; personal or not at all. Aldous Huxley described it as “a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything,” and Michel de Montaigne claimed the term for his writings, linking up his literary “attempts,” or essais, to the French origins of the word. To essay, at its most etymological, is “to try.”  In this event, we will examine the current popularity and parameters of this form.  How might academics incorporate essayistic strategies into scholarly repertoires, and what venues foster these “attempts”? What aesthetic guidelines, if any, exist for a form that is by definition so capacious? How does the literary essay differ from a journal article designed for peer review? We will be joined again in our discussion by practitioners and editors, in a conversation followed by group Q&A.

Speakers:

• Geoff Dyer, author and USC writer in residence
• Lynell George, L.A. based journalist and essayist
• José Vadi, poet, playwright, and essayist

Moderated by Emily Hodgson Anderson, Professor of English and College Dean of Undergraduate Education, and David Ulin, Associate Professor of the Practice of English.

September 28, 2021, 11am-12:30pm  |  RECORDING

For many academics, the book review can offer an opportunity to engage in public discourse, as well as a way to learn more about current state of thinking in one’s field. Successful book reviews, however, are different than academic criticism; they must function as lyrical essays in their own right while also presenting an assessment of the work at hand on a variety of levels: criticism and service journalism, as it were. It is a form in which there is no formal training; most reviewers figure it out as they go along. This event will seek to jump-start that process by gathering book review editors and practiced reviewers to address questions that include: What are the qualities of a successful book review? How does the book review in a specialized academic journal compare to a review in a general interest publication? What are the responsibilities of the reviewer in terms of dealing with lay readers? How are book reviews solicited or placed?  Our invited guests will share remarks for the first half of the event and devote the remaining time to collaborative Q&A. Registration before the event is required. Attendants outside of USC are welcome.

Speakers:

• Colin Burrow, Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, and Contributor, London Review of Books
• Anita Felicelli, Author and Contributor, Los Angeles Review of Books
• Boris Kachka, Books Editor, the Los Angeles Times
• Danzy Senna, Associate Professor of English, USC
• James Yeh, Reviews Editor, The Believer

Moderated by Emily Hodgson Anderson, Professor of English and College Dean of Undergraduate Education, and David Ulin, Associate Professor of the Practice of English

April 14, 2021, 9am-10:30am  |  RECORDING

The final event in our first annual series “On Writing,” will feature a conversation between two exceptional writers: USC’s Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts and Bluets, among many other titles, and novelist and journalist Hari Kunzru, author most recently of Red Pill. The discussion will focus on Kunzru’s new book, both authors’ experiments with genre, and their thoughts on the role and responsibility of the writer—in the academy and beyond.

Speakers: 

Maggie Nelson, Professor of English at USC and author of The Argonauts and Bluets, among many other titles. She has been described as a genre-busting writer defying classification, working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, scholarship, and poetry. Nelson has been the recipient of a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant.

Hari Kunzru, Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His newest novel Red Pill was published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone. He lives in New York City.

March 10, 2021, 12pm-1:30pm  |  RECORDING

Today’s media landscape is increasingly digital, offering writers the chance to experiment with both the composition and the presentation of our work.  This panel discussion will explore the influence and effects of technology on the ways we approach our craft. We will consider a variety of issues: how writing can be presented and enlarged in a digital landscape; the use of the digital as creative space, inspiring forms of composition; and the development of written pieces that are not entirely text-based but also incorporate other media and disciplines. What does writing look like when it involves more than words? The panel will be followed by a group discussion.

Speakers:

• Robert Hernandez, Professor of Professional Practice (USC Annenberg)
• M.G. Lord, Associate Professor of the Practice of English (USC)
• Nooshin Rostami, Adjunct Assistant Professor (USC SCA)
• Donna Spruijt-Metz, Research Professor of Psychology, USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (USC Dornsife)

February 18, 2021, 10am–11:30am  |  RECORDING

While the act of writing usually occurs in isolation, the process by which we write is often collaborative, sometimes in unacknowledged ways. What about our process changes if we think of writing as a “team sport?” This panel will address writing as a collaborative act. Panelists will speak on topics including co-authored articles and monographs, writer-editor relationships, and sharing materials in writing groups. This will be followed by a Q&A session in which attendees will have a chance to discuss their own experiences of thinking and writing collaboratively, as well as the advantages and challenges this presents.

Speakers:

Lorraine Daston, Director Emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and Peter Galison, Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics, Harvard University

Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Southern California and Fiona McCrae, Publisher and Director, Graywolf Press

November 4, 2020, 12pm-1:30pm  |  RECORDING

How can we read our writing with an editor’s eye? What is the nature of the editor/author relationship, and how might it evolve? How can thinking like an editor help us better “pitch” our writing to the readers we hope to reach? In this event, we will hear from editors about how they read and their experience working with authors. We will hear from writers about how editors help them hone and shape their work. Those who work both sides will discuss how their editorial habits influence the writing they do.

Speakers:

• Sewell Chan (op-ed, LA Times)
• Deborah Friedell (reviews, London Review of Books)
• Kim Robinson (University of California Press)
• Tracy Sherrod (Amistad, HarperCollins)
• David Ulin (USC, English)

October 14, 2020, 12pm-1:30pm  |  RECORDING

The style of academic writing has evolved greatly in recent years, becoming more personal and stylistic in a variety of ways. In this event, we will discuss the broad range of forms and styles of writing available to us as academics: from so-called “scholarly writing,” to journalistic endeavors, such as reviews and op-eds; to fiction, memoir, and the personal essay. Do we, or do we want to, see lines of influence among these forms? How do they infiltrate or stand in conversation with our academic work? Participants will include colleagues and others who work across these platforms, and the event will be generative, featuring opportunities for attendees to discuss and brainstorm potential work.

Speakers:

• Leo Braudy (USC, English)
• Sarah Knott (University of Indiana, History)
• Josh Kun (USC, Annenberg)
• Amitava Kumar (Vassar College, English)
• Karen Tongson (USC, English, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and American Studies & Ethnicity)

September 16, 2020, 12pm–1:30pm  |  RECORDING

What does it mean to have a writing “habit”? Can writing be a practice—like a sport, or a dance? Does it require muscle memory? All writers, after all, are different, and no two writers’ processes are the same. So, what do different “practices” of writing look like, especially during the academic semester, when other pressures can’t but intervene? In this broad-based group conversation, we will address these questions, beginning with a panel discussion featuring a range of colleagues, then moving into a broader discussion among the group. How do you write? We want to know. We also want to think about what comes next – the writing itself. To facilitate, that, attendees will have the opportunity to coordinate with others at this event to develop writing groups.

Speakers:

• Luis Alfaro (USC, School of Dramatic Arts)
• Aimee Bender (USC, Creative Writing)
• Deborah Harkness (USC, History)
• Viet Nguyen (USC, English and American Studies and Ethnicity)
• Nayan Shah (USC, American Studies and Ethnicity)