March 2020 – Department of English

March 17, 2020kaf124 1 Comment

Dr. Debra Monroe Awarded at the 2020 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools for her Mentorship of MFA Writers

Texas State’s Professor of Creative Writing, Dr. Debra Monroe, was recently recognized with two awards for her twenty-seven successful years mentoring MFA Creative Writing students: The Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award sponsored by Texas State, and The Conference of Southern Graduate School’s Outstanding Mentor Award.

At Texas State, Dr. Monroe was selected unanimously over other nominated mentors for her work with graduate fiction writers. She received a plaque, an honorarium, and a nomination from Dean of the Graduate College Dr. Andrea Golato for the Conference of Southern Graduate School’s Outstanding Mentor Award. In this nationwide competition between other universities’ most successful mentors, Dr. Monroe rose above other nominees to win the conference award for 2019-2020, which celebrates best practices in graduate studies. The Conference of Southern Graduate Schools reports that this award recognizes an advisor who has maintained successful mentorship of graduate students by “facilitating student learning by making complex ideas understandable and meaningful,” the “establishment and maintenance of high academic standards,” and “consistent and ongoing guidance of students regarding resources within and outside the university, conflict resolution, and advocacy for completion of the program of study in a timely manner.” On each of these standards, and many others, Dr. Monroe exceeds expectations for winning this regional award.

Dr. Golato was introduced to Dr. Monroe through the impressive record of her work and the many successes of her writing students after she was nominated for Texas State’s Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award. “This woman never sleeps,” Dr. Golato states as she passionately relates the extensive list of Dr. Monroe’s accomplishments and contributions, which include 32 student publications of work by former students over just the past two years, and a total of 27 book publications by her graduate mentees over her tenure at Texas State. Today, many of her students attribute the success of their own writing to the mentorship and critical guidance they received from Dr. Monroe, who found success in publishing her own work after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Utah.

Dr. Monroe’s dissertation became her first fiction publication, The Source of Trouble, which was awarded The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1990. Not only does Dr. Monroe support young fiction writers as a mentor and Professor of Creative Writing, but her accomplishments as a writer allow her to bring her own notable successes and experiences with writing and publishing to the advice she offers her students. Other successful works include her nationally acclaimed memoir On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family Against the Grain (2015), which details her experience as the mother in a mixed-race, single-parent family in the American South.

Admiring Dr. Monroe’s work with students beyond her work as a professor, Dr. Golato explains what is “truly special about [Dr. Monroe’s] mentorship is that she has helped students find daycare for their children … find family resources…. [She] encourage[s] students to go on when life gets tough” and return to their work if they have had to leave the program. Dr. Golato’s endorsement of Dr. Monroe continues as she describes her enduring and special impact as an advisor in the humanities. “In the sciences students publish in a team of other students, postdocs, and their professor. Student research interests are often the same as the professor’s because of this.” She explains that, since students in the humanities generally work on isolated projects with their professor’s guidance, they generally graduate with fewer publications than students in the sciences. However, Dr. Monroe’s achievement is that this general trend is not true for her students, and that “this is where Dr. Monroe breaks the mold.”

Dr. Monroe comes to know and value her students as people as well as young writers. It is this mentorship that many students cite as crucial to their successful writing careers, which contain such a long list of student publications that her nomination for the Conference of Southern Graduate School’s Outstanding Mentor Award could include only the most recent two years of student achievements. Serving as much more than a writing coach, Dr. Monroe contributes to the lives and work of her graduate students while maintaining a successful writing career herself.

– Kennedy Farrell, English Major

March 10, 2020kaf124 No Comments

2019 Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement Awarded to Naomi Shihab Nye

The 2019 Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement has been awarded to Texas State Professor of Creative Writing, Naomi Shihab Nye. This prestigious honor is awarded each year by the National Book Critics’ Circle (NBCC) and is named after the NBCC’s first president. Nye joins the ranks of previous winners such as Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and PEN America. Nye will receive the award at a ceremony in New York on March 12, 2020.

Nye’s expansive body of work comprises over thirty-five projects and spans a variety of literary modes, including poetry, young-adult fiction, essays, and novels. Many of Nye’s works reflect her upbringing as a Palestine-American splitting time between Jerusalem and the American South, allowing her to explore themes of heritage and culture in her work. A student studying fiction in the MFA Creative Writing program at Texas State, Caleb Ajinomoho, says that Nye’s poetry “workshops are ritualistic,” and feature Nye’s “genuine, warm, and accessible” presence. Although he writes fiction, Ajinomoho returns to Nye’s workshops regularly, seeking inspiration and “[encouragement] to tap deeper into what’s happening around [him],” and to achieve the same awareness and presence featured in Nye’s celebrated publications. Among these publications are her first collection of poems, titled Different Ways to Pray (1980), which describes the experience of and tensions between cultures in the American South and Mexico; and a children’s book titled Habibi (1997), for which she won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (1998).

A writer since her early childhood, Nye continued practicing her craft while she attended Trinity University in San Antonio, where in 1974 she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and World Religions. Her long experience with writing and studying her craft informs the calm leadership described by current MFA poetry student Katie Kistler, who notes that Nye’s workshops “cultivate an intensely helpful workshopping group each semester.” Kistler describes Nye as the type of mentor and leader that will remind young poets to note all criticisms, including both positive and negative comments made about their work. Kistler continues, “[Nye] has taken her lifetime of writing and revising and turned around to be a mentor for us MFA students — not comparing us to writers who have practiced for decades, but showcasing the practiced empathy of someone who cares deeply about the success of her peers and poetic successors.”

Nye’s work is featured in major online and print poetry anthologies, from ThePoetryFoundation.org to Poets.org. Of her work, the Poetry Foundation states that “Nye is a fluid poet, and her poems are also full of the urgency of spoken language.” In many of Nye’s poems, she offers her observations on humanity gained during her world travels. Of her Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature (2013), World Literature Today describes how “[Nye’s] incandescent humanity and voice can change the world, or someone’s world, by taking a position not one word less beautiful than an exquisite poem.”

Named a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award for her exploration of Middle Eastern culture and heritage in 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Nye has two new books set for publication this year: Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (February 2020) and Everything Comes Next: New and Collected Poems (September 2020). Last year she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. A world-renowned poet and teacher, Nye uses her rich personal history and experiences to compose the perceptive and engaging works that earn her so much acclaim, and to mentor young writers at Texas State with compassion and profound insight.

– Kennedy Farrell, English Major

March 5, 2020mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – March 4, 2020

Whitney May’s essay, “The Technology of Anguish: (Re)Imagining Post-9/11 Trauma in the Fantasy Universes of Tamora Pierce,” has been published in the edited collection Displaced: Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and Trauma, from Routledge. The collection is part of their “Studies in Contemporary Literature” series. Whitney recently participated as a panelist at the Common Experience event “The Truth About Urban Myths and Legends,” a roundtable discussion between Texas State students and scholars of folklore at the university.

Vanessa Couto Johnson will be a reader at the AWP 2020 Offsite joint event of Forklift, Ohio; Rinky Dink Press; and Slope Editions, held at Bar 1919 on Thursday, March 5 from 9-11 p.m. She is also scheduled for author signings at the AWP Bookfair at Slope Editions’ table (T2036) on Saturday, March 7 from 12:30-2:00 p.m.

MFA fiction student Brady Brickner-Wood published a review of Emily Nemens’ debut novel, The Cactus League, in Harvard Review. Her short story, “Shrine Room,” will appear in Bellevue Literary Review‘s spring issue.

Katie Kapurch published “The Beatles, Fashion, and Cultural Iconography,” a chapter in Kenneth Womack’s new collection, The Beatles in Context. The book is part of Cambridge University Press’s “Composers in Context” series and explores wide-ranging aspects of the Beatles’ artistry.

Kathleen Peirce’s new poetry manuscript, Lion’s Paw, will be published by Miami University Press.

Cyrus Cassells and Naomi Shihab Nye will receive awards at this year’s meeting of the Texas Institute of Letters: Cyrus’ Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas will receive The Souerette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation of a Book, and Naomi’s The Tiny Journalist will receive The Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry.

Assistant Professor Cecily Parks has been named Sigma Tau Delta Professor of the Year. Her poem “Nasturtiums” appears in the latest issue of wildness at https://readwildness.com/21/.

Ross Feeler’s short story “Parisian Honeymoon,” was published in Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading, with an introduction by Brandon Taylor: <https://electricliterature.com/parisian-honeymoon-ross-feeler/>

MARC student Lea Colchado’s poems “Ausencia” and “Sundays” have been accepted for publication in Boundless: The Anthology of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival.

Dean of the Graduate College Dr. Andrea Golato reports that Dr. Debra Monroe, faculty member in the Department of English, is the recipient of the 2019–2020 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Mentor Award. Since more than 200 graduate colleges belong to CSGS, the competition for this award is quite fierce and being selected is a very special honor. The Graduate College nominated Dr. Monroe, who was also the recipient of the 2019-2020 Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award, for her outstanding work with countless Master’s students in the Creative Writing MFA program. In particular, the committee recognized her tireless efforts to work closely with both students and alumni and help them publish their creative works as award-winning books and stories in high-profile venues. Through her efforts, she has greatly enhanced the academic and professional pursuits of her students while also attracting top-quality applicants to the Creative Writing Program at Texas State. The Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Mentor Award will be bestowed upon Dr. Monroe next Weekend at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Annual Meeting. She will receive a monetary award and a very nice plaque.

Kitty Ledbetter’s article, “The Women’s Press,” has just been published in Volume 2 of the Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, a three-volume history that offers a definitive account of newspaper and periodical press activity across Britain and Ireland from 1650 to the present day.