Teaching Brevity: Brian Arundel’s “The Things I’ve Lost”

By Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

I open up each session of my five-week memoir and personal essay workshop with a writing prompt. The first session is probably the most challenging and also the most important because this is the start of the students’ journey and they may be nervous about meeting a class of eleven strangers and about what will be taught, especially if they are beginning memoir/essay writers. I often use Brian Arundel’s “The Things I’ve Lost” for that first opening lesson and promp...