Short story, book, play, film, and television discussion classes are scattered throughout the year to give you ample time for pleasure reading and viewing between each one. Pick a course or two to suit your literary tastes and register today!

September also includes five special literary events!

Time will be reserved for audience Q&A. The talks will be recorded and distributed to enrolled students for up to one week of viewing post-event. Register in advance to receive the video, even if you are unable to attend the live session.

Author Visit: Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022)

Monday, September 16 • 1:00pm-2:30pm • Zoom • Course 12788 • $30

In conversation with Anna Katsavos, Shelby Van Pelt will discuss her best-selling debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures. Narrated by an ornery octopus that is bored and frustrated by his confinement in an aquarium, the book centers around the unlikely bond formed with a 70-year-old widow who works the night shift there as a cleaner and is tormented by her son's disappearance decades ago. Unusual, witty, and absorbing, this heartwarming book is a beautiful exploration of friendship and optimism in spite of loss.

SHELBY VAN PELT is the author of Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022), an instant New York Times Bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show book club pick. In 2023, she was awarded the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize from The Writer’s Center. Van Pelt's short stories have also appeared in multiple publications. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives near Chicago.

ANNA KATSAVOS, PhD, is an experienced book group facilitator. A SUNY Professor Emerita of English Literature and Women’s Studies, she has received numerous awards for teaching, and her scholarship has been published in a variety of literary journals. She has interviewed many best-selling authors and has presented interactive programs focusing on a wide range of women’s issues. Additionally, she conducts writing, editing and publishing workshops.

Author Visit: Vicki Valosik, Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water (2024)

Thursday, September 19 • 1:00pm-2:15pm • Zoom • Course 12816 • $30

Popular Hollywood films of the 1940s and 50s helped earn women the right to swim freely for fun and fitness. Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance from circus acts to the Olympics, and brings to life the cast of characters whose swimming spectacles laid the groundwork for a new sport and changed women’s relationship with water. Once forbidden to swim alongside men or required to wear petticoats to hide their legs while wading, female swimming pioneers defied society’s rigid expectations of what was permissible for their sex. Far more than so-called “mermaid queens,” they ushered in sensible swimwear, developed life-saving swim instruction programs, reduced drowning rates, and turned synchronized swimming into a global sport showcasing women’s ambition, grace, and athleticism. Valosik will recount fascinating stories about the athletic joy of “fancy swimming” and why they remain significant today.

For an optimal experience, pair this course with “Swimming Lessons: Swimming and Aquatics in Popular Culture, Literature, and Life” (in-person Course 12713 or online Course 12843).

VICKI VALOSIK is a writer, a synchronized swimmer, and an editorial director and writing instructor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and Slate. She holds an MA in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Alabama.

LORI ROTSKOFF is a cultural historian, writer, educator, and public speaker specializing in memoirs and narrative nonfiction, childhood and youth, women’s and gender studies, and arts and culture. She studied history and literature at Northwestern University and earned a PhD in American Studies at Yale.

Author Visit: Danielle Friedman, Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World (2022)

Thursday, September 26 • 1:00pm-2:15pm • Zoom • Course 12817 • $35

Meet Danielle Friedman, whose book, Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World (2022), chronicles the entrepreneurs who pioneered the barre method, Jazzercise, city marathons, modern yoga studios, and other fitness trends. Today, working out is an accepted, and even expected, part of women's lives. But before the mid-twentieth century in mainstream America, sweating was considered unladylike, and girls grew up believing that too much physical exertion could be harmful to their health. Learn how trailblazing fitness pioneers marketed a vibrant range of commercial programs to enhance women’s mental and physical health, and ponder how successful they have been in transforming fitness from an upscale privilege into an essential right. Friedman’s discussion of her research will spark your nostalgia for past fitness fads and bring you up to date on the latest movements in staying strong.

DANIELLE FRIEDMAN is an award-winning journalist who specializes in telling stories at the intersection of health, gender, and culture. Friedman contributes regularly to the New York Times Well section, where she often explores the connection between movement and mental health. She holds a BA in English from Duke University and an MS from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

LORI ROTSKOFF (see bio for “Author Visit: Vicki Valosik, Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water (2024)”).

Author Visit: Lorraine Besser, The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It (2024)

Thursday, September 26 • 7:00pm-8:30pm • Zoom • Course 12832 • $30

Meet Lorraine Besser, Professor of Philosophy at Middlebury College, whose studies on what makes for a good life are the subject of her upcoming book, The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It (on-sale September 10, 2024). Traditionally, philosophers and psychologists have thought of the good life in terms of happiness or meaning, or some combination of both. Emerging research suggests that such understandings are incomplete, and that “psychological richness,” that which helps make life more interesting, is a key ingredient. Psychological richness derives from our experiences of things that stimulate and engage us – i.e., the interesting. Through delightful stories, Professor Besser explains how to cultivate the “interesting” through mindfulness, novelty, turning obstacles into adventures, and friendships.

LORRAINE BESSER, PhD, is a professor of philosophy at Middlebury College, who specializes in the philosophy and psychology of the good life and teaches popular courses for undergraduates on happiness, well-being, and ethics. An internationally recognized scholar, she was a founding investigator on the research team studying psychological richness. She is the author of The Philosophy of Happiness: An Interdisciplinary Introduction and Eudaimonic Ethics: The Philosophy and Psychology of Living Well, as well as dozens of professional journal articles on moral psychology.

Author Visit: Sierra Greer, Annie Bot (2024)

Monday, September 30 • 1:00pm-2:30pm • Zoom • Course 12789 • $30

In conversation with Anna Katsavos, Sierra Greer will discuss her recent best-seller, Annie Bot. This provocative novel explores the increasingly complicated relationship between a female robot and her human owner. Programmed to provide housekeeping and intimacy services to cater to her owner's every need, Annie is placed in autodidactic mode that makes her seem more human as she acquires knowledge. As he tries to shape her into a misogynist's dream of perfection, her learned emotional intelligence creates conflict between owner and robot. This gripping story explores questions of consent, empowerment, and domestic abuse.

SIERRA GREER grew up in Minnesota before attending Williams College and Johns Hopkins University. A former high school English teacher, she writes about the future from her home in rural Connecticut.

ANNA KATSAVOS (see bio for “Author Visit: Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022)”).

Scarsdale Adult School | 914-723-2325 | P.O. Box 205, Scarsdale, NY 10583 | www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org

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