This class is a book-club-style discussion of Emily Grandy's "Cupido Cupido," a novel, which recently won the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize, a partnership between Texas Tech University Press, the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World, and Terrain.org, a literary journal focused on nature writing. The novel follows Ignatius “Egg” Girard as he unwillingly helps his grandfather prepare the family farm in Hale Creek, Kentucky, for sale, and explores the mysteries that keep cropping up, like the letters Egg discovers in a language he can't read--letters his grandfather immediately throws away on sight--as well as a surprising encounter with a ground-dwelling bird thought to have gone extinct. Instructor Katie Cortese, author of "Make Way for Her and Other Stories" and "Girl Power and Other Short-Short Stories," has work in journals such as Indiana Review, Blackbird and Gulf Coast. She holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University and an M.F.A. from Arizona State University. She teaches in the creative writing program at Texas Tech, where she also serves as faculty director of Texas Tech University Press and series editor of the Iron Horse Book Prize.