Writing the Dead // with Sharon Pajka

This six-week journey through “Writing the Dead” facilitates meaningful dialogue about mortality, fosters creative engagement with themes of grief and remembrance, and encourages participants to use writing and art as transformative tools for connection.

When writers and artists explore themes of death, mortality, and grief, we affirm our connections to the living world. This thoughtful engagement invites us to ask questions, seek meaningful connections, and collaborate—with the living and the dead, the past and the future, and even with audiences or subjects beyond our immediate reach.

Instead of resolving these mysteries, we’ll embrace uncertainty as an essential aspect of the creative process, exploring art and writing that thrives on inquiry rather than answers.

In this course, participants will approach these profound topics with sensitivity and care for themselves, their subjects, and their audience. Together, we’ll read and discuss short texts, examine related artworks, and experiment with creative writing as a critical tool for deepening understanding and transformative expression. Through discussions and writing exercises—such as personal correspondence addressed to recipients who cannot reply—we’ll generate fresh text and ideas to enrich both our writing and creative practices.

Why this exploration is so important

Contemporary western society is “death-denying.” With advances in health care and the big business of the funeral industry, many Americans deny the reality of death and have limited personal connections to death. In short, modern society is suffering from a “death taboo” and those involved with the death positive movement, part of the death awareness movement, encourage people to speak more openly about death (Koksvik and Richards, 2021). The movement strives to shift the dialogue about death and dying into community spaces (Breen, 2020). Research shared by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology notes, “an awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help us re-prioritize our goals and values... Even non-conscious thinking about death -- say walking by a cemetery -- could prompt positive changes and promote helping others.” Researchers argue that conversations around death are useful strategies to improve both death and grief literacy which may help promote the flourishing concept of compassionate communities as part of palliative care.

Through this course you will:

• Critically Engage with Death Awareness – Analyze contemporary attitudes toward death and dying, examining how societal norms shape personal and communal perspectives on mortality.

• Explore Grief and Memory Through Creative Expression – Utilize writing, visual art, and ritual to process grief, honor memory, and cultivate a deeper understanding of loss.

• Develop a Personal and Cultural Perspective on Remembrance – Investigate various cultural traditions and personal rituals surrounding death, considering how material objects, storytelling, and creative practices sustain connections with the deceased.

• Experiment with Writing as a Tool for Dialogue with the Dead – Compose letters, reflections, and creative pieces that explore the concept of ongoing conversations with the departed, fostering personal and artistic growth.

• Foster Community Through Shared Reflection – Participate in discussions, Death Café sessions, and collaborative exercises that encourage open dialogue about mortality, grief, and remembrance in a supportive environment.

Week by Week

Week 1: Death Awareness

September 17- 23, 2025

Media:

o Death Positive Movement, The Order of the Good Death,

o “Death Is Nothing at All” by Henry Scott-Holland

o Teju Cole, “My Grandmother’s Shroud.” The New York Times

Discussion Topics:

o How modern society engages with or avoids the reality of death.

o The transformative potential of death awareness in personal and community contexts.

Activities:

o Zoom Group conversation (recorded) exploring personal connections to the theme. Saturday, September 20 th 11-1pm ET

o Writing exercise: Reflective writing prompt.

Week 2: Grief and Creative Responses

September 24- 30, 2025

Media:

o Bryan Perez, “A Student Finds Culture and Community at ‘Day of the Dead’

Workshop.” 

o Romare Bearden’s Tomorrow I May Be Far Away (companion NGA article).

o Why ghosts are good for you: Patricia Pearson at TEDxTucson

Discussion Topics:

o Grief as a collaborative process in art and writing.

o Examining cultural practices and personal rituals for remembrance.

Activities:

o Creative collage exercise inspired by Bearden, integrating themes of grief and remembrance.

o Reflection: Writing a short piece about the collage’s meaning.

Week 3: Realities of Death

October 1- 7, 2025

Media:

o I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying | Dr. Christopher Kerr |TEDxBuffalo (17 minutes)

o “End-of-Life Care: Mending Mortality.” The Economist

o Jonathan Jong, Jonathan. “How Scared of Death Are We Really – and How Does That Affect Us?” The Conversation

Activities:

o Create a sugar skull and compose a still life photography scene. Following the instructions from the paper sugar skull kit (where you color and fold the skull), you will create a still life photography scene containing inanimate objects along with your paper sugar skull in a way that is meaningful to honor a lost loved one.

o Write an accompanying reflection on the meaning of chosen items and the meaning the objects hold in connection to your departed loved one.

Week 4: Art and Ritual in Remembrance: Objects of Memory

October 8- 14, 2025

Readings:

o We Need a Heroic Narrative for Death TEDMED

o Rajat Singh, “We Need the Dead.” Asian American Writers’ Workshop

o Penny Colman, Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial.

o Instructions, examples, and guidance for paper sugar skull creation.

Discussion Topics:

o Personal versus cultural practices in honoring the dead.

o The use of material objects to communicate memory and love.

Activities:

o OPTIONAL Death Café session: A facilitated group dialogue via Zoom (not

recorded) Saturday, October 11, 11-1ET.

o Write a reflection after the meeting.

Week 5: Writing as a Bridge Between Worlds

October 15- 21, 2025

Readings:

o Sharon Pajka, “Wind phones in cemeteries: an act of personal and community transformation.”

o Postal Service for the Dead Eases Grief Through Letters, Episode 159, Heart of Hospice Podcast, May 18, 2023

o “L.A. Artist and Archivist Celebrates Year of ‘Postal Service for the Dead.’” Tulip Cremation

o Postal Service for the Dead

Activities:

o Writing to a departed friend, family, or foe.

Week 6: Dialogues with the Dead and Moving Forward

October 22- 28, 2025

Readings:

o L.A. Times, “‘Continue a conversation’ with the dead.”

o Dagmawi Woubshet, Introduction to The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS, “Looking for the Dead: Disprized Mourners and the Work of Compounding Loss.”

Discussion Topics:

o How writing can deepen our relationships with memory and loss.

o The idea of unfinished conversations as a creative and emotional tool.

Activities:

o Zoom Closing (recorded) Saturday, October 25 11-1pm ET

Who Should Take This Class

Any living person who has or will have an experience with a loved one's or their own death.

If cost is a barrier, we offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

Format

This is an online class, hosted on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink and includes three optional Zoom sessions: 

• Saturday, September 20 11-1pm ET 
• Death Cafe session October 11, 11-1pm ET 
• Saturday, October 25 11-1pm ET 

The instructor will post videos weekly on Wet Ink as well as the recordings from the Sept. 20 and Oct. 25 Zoom sessions. 

The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to authors’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. Wet Ink is mobile-friendly and there are no browser requirements.

About the Teacher

Sharon Pajka is a Professor of English. She holds a Ph.D. in English Education and a graduate certificate in Public History. Her writing combines a love of words and the stories of those who came before us. She is the author of Women Writers Buried in Virginia (2021) The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe: Graves of His Family, Friends and Foes (2023), winner of the 2024 Saturday Visiter Awards by Poe Baltimore in the "Adaptation of Poe's Life or Works" category. 

On the weekends, you can find her in the cemetery volunteering, giving history tours, researching and writing about cemeteries. Find more information on her website: https://www.sharonpajka.com/ 

Works Cited: 

•       Breen L. (2020). Grief, loss and the coronavirus pandemic. Aust. J. Gen. Pract. 49, 1–2. 10.31128/AJGP-COVID-20

•        Graham-Wisener L., Nelson A., Byrne A., Islam I., Harrison C., Geddis J., et al. (2022). Understanding public attitudes to death talk and advance care planning in Northern Ireland using health behaviour change theory: a qualitative study. BMC Public Health 22:906. 10.1186/s12889-022-13319-1

•        Koksvik G. and Richards, N. (2021). Death Café, Bauman and striving for human connection in ‘liquid times'. Mortality 16, 380–393. 10.1080/13576275.2021.1918655

•        Society for Personality and Social Psychology. "How thinking about death can lead to a good life." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 April 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419102516.htm>.