Congratulations!
Miriam Williams‘ article, “The Social Justice Impact of Plain Language: A Critical Approach to Plain Language Analysis,” (co-authored with Natasha Jones of University of Central Florida), will be published in the 2017 Plain Language Special Issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Professional Communication.
Joe Falocco was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in support of his “Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays” project. The grant of approximately $63,000, awarded through Summer Seminars and Institutes for College and University Teachers, supports professional development programs in the humanities for school teachers, and college and university faculty. The venue for this NEH seminar is the Curtain Theatre in Austin, a reconstructed early-modern playhouse owned by Austin-area philanthropists Richard and Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux. Inspired by the Globe Theater in London, this unique facility features many of the architectural features of Shakespeare’s original stage. Joe also recently performed in Cabaret and in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas at TexARTS Theatre in Lakeview.
Two poems by MFA graduate and Texas State Lecturer Autumn Hayes were recently published: “A Poem Some People Will Have to Misunderstand” appeared in 3:AM Magazine and “Sieges” appeared in Vol. 9, Issues 1-2 of The Seattle Review.
Katie Kapurch has been very busy with several projects. Her chapter, “The Wretched Life of a Lonely Heart: Sgt. Pepper’s Girls, Fandom, the Wilson Sisters, and Chrissie Hynde” appears in an edited collection titled The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper, and the Summer of Love (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). Her proposal for a new book, “Crying in the Sunshine: Conditional American Dreams in Los Angeles Pop Music,” has been accepted by Penn State University Press’s American Music History Series. Preliminary research for that book was made possible this summer by funding from the Texas State Research Enhancement Program. And, she wrote a review of Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism, which appears in the first 2017 issue of The Lion and the Unicorn. Katie won the internal competition at Texas State to submit a proposal for an NEH Summer Stipend.
Keith Needham was named the Outstanding University Seminar Instructor for Texas State University. His photo will be catalogued on the Texas State University website as the first recipient of this award, which will be given each year hereafter. He also receives a $1,000 stipend.
Lecturer and MFA poetry graduate Vanessa Johnson has two poems in the current issue of SOFTBLOW.
Rebecca Bell-Metereau was recently interviewed by an online publication titled Paratonnerre about the influence of the original Alien film on gender roles, science fiction, and film in general. It’s in English, but it’s also translated into French, for those who would like to buff up on their French.
At the 44th annual Children’s Literature Association conference, Marilynn Olson presented “Sadder and Wiser Circuses: Seeds of Rebellion in the Billy Whiskers Series,” Teya Rosenberg presented “Travelling Spirits: Min(d)ing the Past to Forge the Future in Works by Virginia Hamilton and Julius Lester,” and Graeme Wend-Walker presented “Imagining Futures, Imagining a Past: Nnedi Okorafor’s Afrofuturist Works of Trans-Temporal Healing.” The conference was held in Tampa, FL in June.
Also in June, Roger Jones’s Japanese haibun e-chapbook “Goodbye” was published online by the Snapshot Press in the UK.
Kitty Ledbetter will present a seminar titled “Using Periodicals in Creative Research and Teaching” at the 50th anniversary celebration of Victorian Periodicals Review on September 15 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN.
Flore Chevaillier’s second book has been published by the Ohio State University Press. Divergent Trajectories: Interviews with Innovative Fiction Writers examines the aesthetic, political, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of contemporary fiction through a series of interviews with some of today’s most cutting-edge fiction writers.
Susan Morrison’s book, A Medieval Woman’s Companion: Women’s Lives in the European Middle Ages, won a gold medal in College Nonfiction from Literary Classics. It is also now available in German from Verlagshaus Römerweg (Imprint: Berlin University Press) as Frauen des Mittelalters: Künstlerinnen – Herrscherinnen – Denkerinnen (translator Herbert Genzmer).
Alumnus Updates
John Fry’s first full-length poetry collection, With the Dogstar as My Witness, was a finalist for this year’s Orison Poetry Prize, will be published by Orison Books in 2018. The manuscript has also been a finalist for Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize and the Nightboat Poetry Prize. John graduated from the MFA program in 2012. He currently lives in the Texas Hill Country and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he’s writing a dissertation on medieval English literature. He edits poetry for Newfound Journal and also serves as an Assistant Program Coordinator for the University Writing Center at UT-Austin. His work has recently appeared in Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute, 2016), Waxwing, Blackbird, and Devil’s Lake.