Cyrus Cassells has been named the 2021 Texas Poet Laureate by the Texas State Legislature. The appointees for 2021 were selected by a legislative-appointed committee for the exceptional quality of their work and for their outstanding commitment to the arts in Texas. The 2021 appointees were formally announced through senate resolutions at the capitol on May 18th.

Aimee Roundtree is the recipient of the Mariel M. Muir Excellence in Mentoring Award for 2021. These awards are given annually to one faculty member and one staff member who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to assisting less experienced individuals in becoming more proficient in their professional activities.

The Texas State University System Board of Regents unanimously approved the motions to rename two residence halls on the San Marcos campus and name two unnamed streets on the Round Rock Campus after distinguished members of the Texas State family who are from the Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities. These recommendations include naming one of the unnamed roads on the Round Rock Campus Elvin Holt Drive, after Dr. Elvin Holt, the first Black professor in the Department of English, for his work in multicultural curriculum development.

Steve Wilson’s poems “Saraca Inima Me” and “Hello” appear in A Tether to This World: Stories & Poems About Recovery, from Main Street Rag Publishing. Steve will be one of four featured readers at the virtual book launch taking place via Zoom this evening. See details about tonight’s event here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMI5NUMdFOa0TULRhJGdowl94FLmKHlw6-V3_eYCC70Ogyhw/viewform?fbzx=649879616519473957&fbclid=IwAR38K_XKFkUczqyOtwttxHV9Dm_xm3sJVbbj4RYyDHmohiyL8j5tHAtL288

Suparno Banerjee’s “An Introduction to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008),” co-authored with Kevin C. Kyzer, was recently published in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Suparno’s review of Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee’s Final Frontiers: Science Fiction and Techno-Science in Non-Aligned India was published in Science Fiction Studies. 

Alan Schaefer recently presented “Fantasy, Dystopia, and Detective Instinct: Jess Franco’s Diabolical Dr. Z and Attack of the Robots” at Utopia & Dystopia: Conference on the Fantastic in Media Entertainment. His piece “‘I hear voices, like Joan of Arc’: Eddie Constantine’s Sixties Super-Spy Sendoffs” will appear on the Imagining the Impossible research blog.