Writing with Maryann DiEdwardo

This episode reframes the humanities as a practice of becoming human—rooted in phenomenology, contemplative practice, and the arts. Through personal stories of dance, theater, and journaling, the speaker shows how close reading, music, and sustained reflection support healing, learning, and moral imagination.Concrete classroom methods—pairing music with writing, prayer journaling inspired by Flannery O’Connor and Thomas Merton, metacognitive strategies, and hermeneutic interpretation—illustrate how peace literacy turns pain into insight, voice, and action. The core message: literature and reflection cultivate compassion, agency, and a more humane way of living.

Personal voice and female selfhood are components to the work of Cather.

Maryann explains why the humanities matter, weaving theater arts, neuroscience, literature, architecture, and geopolitics into a case for interdisciplinary, archival-driven research and student-centered pedagogy.
She highlights metacognition, hermeneutics, writing, and advocacy projects as practical tools for developing critical thinking, cultural awareness, and civic engagement.

Maryann DiEdwardo presents Chapter 2, exploring Toni Morrison as a modernist and post-colonial writer whose novels—especially The Bluest Eye and Beloved—spatialize the experience of powerlessness, exile, and healing. This episode pairs literary critique with the author’s personal reflections, showing how narrative and archival study inform a methodology that links literature, music, and civic engagement to promote peace.
The discussion emphasizes evidence-based change through service writing and community engagement, and frames the creative process as a path to personal and social transformation. More reflections on spatializing literature will follow.

Maryann DiEdwardo introduces Chapter 1, exploring how Willa Cather's fiction maps cultural and imaginative landscapes, with close attention to My Mortal Enemy and its protagonist's interior space, choices, and sense of mortality.
The episode outlines methods like critical hermeneutics and a human-rights lens for reading literature, connecting Aristotle's poetics, spatial theory, and the healing power of narrative while recommending Cather's work as essential for understanding selfhood and place.

Maryann DiEdwardo introduces her work on spatializing writing and social justice, discussing her book Spatializing Social Justice Literary Critiques and the case studies that shaped it — from Willa Cather's landscapes to Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Flannery O'Connor, Ernest Cline, and Stephanie Powell Watts.
She outlines her research approach, the importance of author journals and specific case studies, and signals more conversations to come.

Hello, this is a live show.Workshops for Writers is starting now. My name is Maryann DiEdwardo. The most important aspect of my writing is that it happens every day. I begin by listening to music to relax my mind and prepare for writing. I conducted a case study with 70 community college students that showed music and literature together can increase motivation and improve writing.
We explored how music reduces stress, enhances creativity, and aids long-term memory. By discussing songs alongside literary works and using a Platonic methodology, students practiced free writing inspired by music and transferred those feelings into their writing process. Join the conversation to learn how music can boost grades, attendance, and overall academic achievement.

Hello, this is Maryann DiEdwardo discussing alliteration and iambic pentameter. She explains alliteration as the repetition of consonant or vowel sounds (noting sibilance when 's' repeats), gives examples from Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and describes iambic pentameter as a common English metrical form (blank verse) and mentions its use by poets like Wordsworth. The episode highlights how sound shapes rhythm and meaning in poetry.

Maryann reads a chapter from her newest book -Approaches to Resistance Literature through Hermeneutics, Metacognition and Phenomenology.

Maryann DiEdwardo is curator for a new Science Fiction Anthology for Something or Other Publishing. Fantastic Worlds https://a.co/d/4q26rlf