Miscellany – May 2018, #2

Please send future Miscellany items to your new/former Associate Chair, Steve Wilson, sw13@txstate.edu. Thank you!

Texas State alumna Terri Leclerq has received the prestigious 2018 Golden Pen Award, a national honor that goes to an outstanding writer about law. Terri’s most recent book, Prison Grievances (2013), is a graphic novel that is to help those in prison develop effective petitions and navigate grievances. As an award winner, she joins distinguished justices, academics, and writers such as Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times. Terri is a prior recipient of the Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award and a founding member of the department’s Donor and Alumni Advisory Council. She received a BS in Education (English/Journalism) at Texas State in 1968 and an MA in English in 1970.

Congratulations to Professor John Blair, who has been named by President Trauth a University Distinguished Professor, one of Texas State’s most coveted faculty honors. This follows a number of other awards for his creative work, including most recently the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Wilda Herne Prize for Fiction, and the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. As a University Distinguished Professor, Dr. Blair will receive a one-time $5,000 cash award, a commemorative medallion, and recognition during the fall convocation. Dr. Trauth is also nominating him for consideration by The Texas State University System (TSUS) Board of Regents for the Regents’ Professor Award, and will submit his portfolio to The TSUS office.

Professor Dan Lochman’s article “Textual Memory and the Problem of Coherence in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” is just out in a special issue on Narrative and the Biocultural Turn (ed. Vittorio Gallese and Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski), in Costellazioni: Rivista de lingue e letterature (Volume 2, Number 5, [2018]: 147-80). At the end of March, he read the paper “Arthur’s Memory: Spontaneity and Deliberation in The Faerie Queene” at the New Orleans meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, where he also co-organized three panels on early modern cognition and affect.

Lecturer Daniel Keltner’s first novel Into That Good Night comes out June 5th. The book launch and reading is at Book People in Austin: https://www.facebook.com/events/1790494951254528/

Two poems by Professor Roger Jones have been published in Southern Poetry Anthology VIII: “The Bee Tree” and “Bait.” https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Poetry-Anthology-VIII-Texas/dp/1680030639

The Graduate Programs of the Department of English are pleased to announce the recipients of 2018 Graduate College Scholarships. We are very proud of the current and incoming graduate students who were successful in a competitive field of applicants. Please congratulate these fine folks who are in your classes or working with you and be ready to welcome and congratulate the incoming students who will join us this coming summer and fall.