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American novelist Douglas Kennedy will teach at a Swiss university

Douglas Kennedy teaches at the University of Lausanne
Douglas Kennedy teaches at the University of Lausanne Keystone-SDA

The best-selling writer will be teaching at the University of Lausanne (Unil) in the spring semester. He will teach a course on writing novels once a week.

Kennedy’s course, entitled How it works: A Course on the Craft of Writing Fiction, spans 14 lectures and is integrated into the curriculum of the English section of the Faculty of Arts.

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Kennedy’s lessons will combine the reading of literary texts (mainly from the English-speaking world) with a series of writing exercises. The 70-year-old New Yorker is best known for his novels he Marriage Trap (1994), The Man Who Wanted to Live His Life (1997), The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) and The Discreet Charms of Married Life (2005). Kennedy has published around 30 books, which have been translated into around 20 languages and sold more than eight million copies.

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To kick off his Lausanne semester, Kennedy will give his first lecture next Tuesday in the Salle Métropole concert hall. In addition to the lecture series at Unil, Kennedy will also be attending the 23rd International Film Festival on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva in March and taking part in a panel discussion on the topic of “Where is the US going?”.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

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