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New Approaches to Reading and Analyzing Nonfiction

Janet Ruth Heller will be speaking about “Keys to Reading and Analyzing Nonfiction” for the Michigan Reading Association Conference at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday, March 14, 2020 and Monday, March 16, 2020. She will do her presentation on Saturday, March 14 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Brule B and on Monday, March 16 from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Brule A. Please come! Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com/

This session will explore new approaches to reading and analyzing nonfiction developed by contemporary educators and researchers, including Heller. Old strategies for teaching students how to read, analyze, and write nonfiction often confuse our classes. For example, the five-paragraph essay paradigm oversimplifies the structure of most nonfiction. Participants will discuss some complex modern essays, applying the new strategies. Heller has published many essays, scholarly articles, and books of nonfiction, and she has also published analyses of nonfiction. Participants will receive handouts detailing possible structures and lesson plans for teaching nonfiction.

Janet Ruth Heller giving a presentation at the Kalamazoo Public Library; photo by Hedy Habra

Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Levri Ardiansyah January 18, 2020

    Huge congratulations dear Heller. This is a must-see. New approaches to reading, analyzing and then applying new strategies are very interesting. Great work! Warmest regards, Lev.

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