By: Emily Sakamoto

“How do conservatives fall in love?”

Award-winning journalist, author and playwright Roger Rosenblatt read aloud this line from his newest manuscript, leaving the sizable crowd in Brandi Recital Hall laughing. The debut reading of the manuscript occurred this past Saturday afternoon, and the piece has an expected date of publication in early January 2015. Rosenblatt returned to campus at the start of the semester to instruct a weeklong seminar course in memoir writing to students who enrolled in the class with the prerequisite of a submitted writing sample and application.

Students spent each seminar meeting writing about one or more elements, ranging from emotion to fantasy, utilizing a total of six components.

Each student who participated in the course read aloud a piece they had written. Topics were varied, encompassing childhood memories, bullies, a brief encounter with George Clooney and the ever-popular theme of love. There were anecdotes about parents and children, tortured breakups, emergency room scares and even a slightly romanticized memoir that yearned for the Pizza Hut of yesteryear.

No one can deny, however, that the star of the show was, of course, Rosenblatt as he read from his manuscript Love Song. David Lynn, editor of the Kenyon Review, delivered a short introduction of Rosenblatt, a Peabody award winner and New York Times bestselling author, most recently of The Boy Detective.

Romantic and witty, Rosenblatt’s latest work can only be described as a detailed, stylistic prose that will no doubt captivate audiences in much the same way it enchanted the bursting auditorium of people who braved the cold on Saturday to attend. Those who attended were not disappointed by Rosenblatt, who described his manuscript as about “mainly romantic love, because romantic love is so easy to understand.”

One line in particular struck a note with every romantic in the audience.

“It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you.”