Miscellany – January 22, 2020

The National Book Critics Circle Award announced a special lifetime achievement award to recognize Naomi Shihab Nye, The Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement, which is given to a person or institution — a writer, publisher, critic, or editor, among others — who has, over time, made significant contributions to book culture. The awards ceremony in New York is March 12.

MA Literature graduate and Lecturer Whitney Shylee May presented two papers at the recent meeting of the Modern Language Association, held in Seattle: “‘It Was Only Because I Was Radically Both’: Fin De Siècle Doppelgängers and the New British Cosmopolitanism”; and “‘Many Books, Many Poes’: Pop-Culture Authorship and the Cult of Edgar Allan Poe.”

Lecturer and MFA poetry graduate Vanessa Couto Johnson has a poem in the Dialogist, accompanied by a recording of her reading the poem: https://dialogist.org/poetry/2019-week-50-vanessa-couto-johnson She also has a poem in Everything in Aspic‘s debut issue, which can be read here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d5883acff86bf0001f42ae9/t/5df6f6dd460f77349dcd341d/1576466151495/Everything+in+Aspic+%231.pdf

MFA poetry student Anthony Bradley’s essay, “My Accent Makes Me Beautiful,” appears in the latest issue of Coachella Review: http://thecoachellareview.com/wordpress/archives-2/nonfiction/my-accent-makes-me-beautiful/

“associative thinking,” by MFA poetry graduate and Lecturer Melanie Robinson, was published online by The Boiler Journalhttps://theboilerjournal.com/2020/01/07/melanie-kristeen/

Rob Tally’s article “Said, Marxism, and Spatiality: Wars of Position in Oppositional Criticism” appears in ariel: A Review of International English Literature, in a special issue (belatedly) commemorating the 40th anniversary of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Rob’s interview with Professors Liyuan Zhu and Yang Lu of Fudan University in Shanghai has just been published in the Chinese journal Academic Research. His English responses were translated into Chinese by Dr. Fang Ying, who was a visiting scholar in the English Department here last year. The title, in English, is “Spatial Theory and Geographical Criticism: A Dialogue between Zhu Luyuan, Lu Yang, and Robert Tally.”

The D.H. Lawrence Society of North America awarded MFA fiction student Mary-Pat Hayton a partial Fellowship to attend the 15th D.H. Lawrence International Conference in Taos, New Mexico, July 12 -17, where she will present.

MFA poetry graduate Danielle Zaccagnino’s book of hybrid essays and experimental poems Suppose Muscle, Suppose Night, Suppose This is forthcoming from Mason Jar Press in August 2020.

Steve Wilson took part in a poetry reading at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston on January 18, in support of the anthology Enchantment of the Ordinary, which includes Steve’s work.

Debra Monroe was interviewed about creating her teaching anthology—and about the genre itself and about pedagogical aims—in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. https://www.assayjournal.com/debra-monroe.html?fbclid=IwAR1N9OKDUhWMhxsYQQOGmEHgacRHWZy96AiAfqA0UWQs0W_12SfJxvu4F-s

Miscellany – Jan 06, 2020

MATC student Cristian Hernandez accepted a position as Technical Writer at IBM in Austin, Texas.

MFA fiction student Clayton Bradshaw’s scholarly poster entitled “Literacy and Therapy: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Veterans” was accepted for presentation at the Military Social Work and Behavioral Health Conference, to be held April 9-10, 2020 at the University of Texas-Austin; he will present with Brooke Pillifant on their work developing creative writing and storytelling classes for veterans at the Travis County Correctional Center and the Hays County Jail. Clayton’s personal essay “The Rain Falls Like Democracy” was selected as the Publisher’s Pick in Issue 12 of Barren Magazine.  The piece may be found at https://barrenmagazine.com/the-rain-falls-like-democracy/.

MARC graduate and Lecturer Connor Wilson will present “Who’s Really Writing?: Automated Writing Analysis and the Authorial Voice” at the March 2020 meeting of the College English Association, taking place on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island.

John Blair’s story collection This Heart and Its Flames has been named winner of the Prize Americana for Prose 2019.

Susan Morrison’s article on teaching in East Germany in the 1980s and analyzing her Stasi (secret police) file, “Teaching in East Germany in the 1980s: Collaborating with my Stasi File,” appears in the Autumn issue of FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts. Susan was invited to contribute by MFA poetry graduate Dorothy Lawrenson, who is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
http://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/4142/5844

MFA poetry graduate and Lecturer Katherine Stingley’s manuscript, “The Chorus is Ready,” was named a finalist by Texas Review Press for their 2019 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize.

In support of Steve Wilson’s new collection of poetry, The Reaches, Small Fires Press has created a poetry broadside of “Hello” in an edition of 100 copies.

Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler has been named a section editor (North America) for the Routledge Encyclopedia of the World Renaissance. She is also a contributor.

English major Emily Fullenwider’s presentation “The Personal and Powerful Drawings within Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School” has been accepted for the Comics Arts Conference, to be held at the Anaheim, CA meeting of WonderCon, taking place in April. Emily wrote the essay for Steve Wilson’s Fall 2019 “Sexing the Word” course.

Cyris Cassells’ poem “Altitude” was the December 30th poem of the day at the Academy of American Poets website:  https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/ViewEmail/y/A5A4A4CBE4024522/D5A988C5060D7DA24AB3169DA1FD82E9.