We’ve been reading since kindergarten — so why does it still feel like a skill we’re missing? This session unpacks the fundamentals of critical reading through stories that prove just how different reading a book is from reading a caption.

We play Sherlock: reading between the lines, and deducing what’s unsaid. We introduce genres, theories, and schools of thought — and use them in live in-class assignments.

We take literature’s most exploited and underappreciated form and set it free. We also discuss why writing a love letter — a real one — cultivates something rare: a quality that is hard to learn, and even harder to preserve.

Identity — timeless and more contested than ever. What does it mean in literature? How does reading negotiate between identity and anonymity? And where does translation fit when you’re searching for who you are?

We face poetry without flinching — without gobbledygooks like rhyme schemes or iambic whatever-meters. We find new ways to look at poetry, talk about its relevance today, and ask: “Are the poets on our ‘feeds’ actually poets?”