Department of English

Congratulations:

MFA student Graham Oliver interviewed former Austin Bat Cave director Manuel Gonzales about his new book The Regional Office is Under Attack! for The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2016/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-manuel-gonzales/ [archived].

 

Tiwi Retnaningdyah, who earned her MA in Literature at Texas State a few years ago, received her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from the University of Melbourne last month. She is now back in Indonesia, teaching at the State University of Surabaya.

 

Tina Zigon, who traveled from Slovenia to pursue an MA in Literature at Texas State, today defended her PhD dissertation at the University of Buffalo. Dr. Zigon currently resides in Kuwait City.

 

A poem by MFA poetry graduate and current Lecturer Amanda North, “Bloodline,” has been published on The Open Bar at Tin House: http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/42726/bloodline.html [archived].

 

Sigma Tau Delta named Vicki Smith as 2016 Outstanding Professor of English.

 

Two poems by Steve Wilson, “The Beauty of the Village” and “Of April,” are featured on the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College website, as part of their series on ekphrastic poetry: http://maiermuseum.org/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-poem/ [archived].

 

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) Board of Directors passed a motion to create a Texas State University student chapter of STC.  MATC student and Graduate Assistant David Hernandez submitted the application, recruited student members, and serves as President of the Texas State University Student Chapter of STC.

Congratulations:

Graduating MFA fiction student Josh Lopez has been selected as the 2016-17 L.D. Clark and LaVerne Harrell Clark Writer-in-Residence. Josh will live and write in the Clarks’ historic home in Smithville and also teach classes in the Department of English.

 

John Blair’s new prize-winning collection of poems Playful Song Called Beautiful has just been released and is now available from the University of Iowa Press, online at Amazon.com and elsewhere.

 

In July 2015, Teya Rosenberg gave the keynote lecture for “Child, Youth, and Place in Atlantic Canadian Literature,” a symposium that included scholars from across Canada and the US. Her lecture, “We Do Have Jack: Considering Contexts for the Jack Series by Andy Jones and Darka Erdelji,” plus other highlights of the symposium (including a wonderful puppet show), are now available online on YouTube and through Sea Stacks, a website for Atlantic Canadian books for young readers: https://seastacks.lib.unb.ca/content/child-youth-and-place-atlantic-canadian-literature-9th-raddall-symposium.

 

Haley Stuart, senior English major, has won Sigma Tau Delta’s national Herbert Hughes Short Story Award for her story, “Semblance.” The story appears in the 2016 issue of The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, the honor society’s national journal of creative writing. This is her first publication. The 2016 issue is available online as a PDF: http://www.english.org/sigmatd/pdf/publications/rectangle.pdf.

 

Rob Tally’s article “Lukács’s Literary Cartography: Spatiality, Cognitive Mapping, and The Theory of the Novel” appears in the current issue of Mediations (Spring 2016).

 

MFA poetry student James Deitz’s poem “After the Iraqi Sun” will appear in the Austin International Poetry Festival anthology, di-verse-city. Anamesa Interdisciplinary Journal is publishing “Check Fire in Tikrit, Iraq” in its Spring 2016 issue.

 

MATC student Amanda Scott presented “Sense and Sexuality: Using Creative Nonfiction Flash to Examine Memory, Trauma, and Identity” at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) conference, which recently took place in Seattle. She will present “Reconciling Hybridity: Towards a More Inclusive Understanding of Biracial Identity in Technical Communication” at the Association for Teachers of Technical Writing Conference, to be held April 6 in Houston.

Congratulations:

The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses, edited by Cecily Parks, was published by Everyman’s Library in March.

 

Kitty Ledbetter organized a panel and presented her paper entitled “Technology Revolutionizes the History of Women’s Needlework” at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference, held in Asheville, NC on March 12.

 

Miles Wilson’s story “Tough” (The Georgia Review, Spring 2015) is one of three finalists for awards from Western Writers of America and the Texas Institute of Letters.  “Bang,’ a piece of creative nonfiction, is forthcoming in the first volume of the second hundred years of Southwest Review.  His poems “You, Theordore Roethke” and “Keeping Track” will appear in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume  VIII: Texas.  Last fall he was a featured reader at the South Dakota Festival of Books where he presented with Pete Dexter, winner of the National Book Award for Paris Trout.

 

Michael Noll has accepted a position as Program Director for the Writers’ League of Texas. The Austin-based nonprofit offers one-day writing classes, a week-long writing retreat, and the annual Agents & Editors Conference every June.

 

Rob Tally presented “Literary Cartography, Marxism, and Form” at the American Comparative Literature Association’s annual meeting, held in Cambridge, MA.

 

Mark Busby’s essay, “The Polychotomous Southwest,” appears in Critical Insights: Southwestern Literature, edited by Will Brannon (Hackensack, NJ:  Salem/Grey House Publishing, 2016): 2-19.  At the March Conference of College Teachers of English in San Antonio, Mark presented “Moving Targets:  Geography in Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”; and as a member of the CCTE Advisory Council, he chaired three Rhetoric sessions.

 

Logan Fry’s two poems, “Gershwin’s Wash Room” and “Essential Isles,” will appear in New American Writing, and the poems “Gesticulation Overture” and “The Master and Margarita” will be in Volt. Both issues are slated for release this spring.

 

In March, Graeme Wend-Walker presented “Gormenghast and Brakebills: Wonderment in Collapse” at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, held in Orlando, Florida.

Congratulations:

Miles Wilson, who retired last August after a career of 35 years at Texas State, has been approved to receive the title of Distinguished Faculty Emeritus. He will be invited to attend the fall convocation ceremony to receive an acknowledgment from President Trauth. Only three faculty from across the university are selected for this honor each year.

 

Dorothy Lawrenson, a 3rd-year poetry student in the MFA program in Creative Writing, has been named the 2016 Outstanding Master’s Student in the College of Liberal Arts. She will receive an award at this year’s Liberal Arts Awards Day celebration on April 20th, 6 pm, Alkek Teaching Theatre.

 

Through the Veil, the first book by Colleen (Booker) Halverson, who received her degree in English from Texas State, has just been published by Entangled. The story draws from Colleen’s participation in the Texas State in Ireland program, sponsored by the English Department each summer.

 

Susan Morrison’s novel, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, is a finalist for Foreward Reviews‘ 2015 Indiefab Book of the Year Award: Historical (Adult Fiction).

 

Vanessa Johnson’s poem “Render Billow” will appear in Field.

 

In “The Ripple Effect in Faculty-Driven Internationalization,” appearing on pages 36-37 of the IIE Networker (published by the Institute for International Education), author Daris Hale discusses Steve Wilson’s influence on the Fulbright program at Texas State. http://www.nxtbook.com/naylor/IIEB/IIEB0116/index.php#/0

 

Texas State University graduate Enkay Iguh (B.A. in English, 2013), who completed her MFA in fiction at NYU last year, has won the Disquiet International Literary Prize. She will receive a full fellowship to the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and her story “House Girl” will appear in Guernica Magazine.

 

Scott Mogull will present research on the accuracy of cited claims in the medical literature at the 42nd Conference of the European Medical Writers Association, which will be held in Munich, Germany this May.

 

Joyland Magazine has published “The Resurrection Act,” a short story by MFA fiction student Shannon Perri: http://www.joylandmagazine.com/regions/south/resurrection-act

Congratulations:

Paul and Robin Cohen gave an invited talk on Shakespeare and Postmodernism for Philosophy Department students and faculty.

 

Three English Department faculty members presented at the 35th Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience (FYE), held in Orlando, Florida in mid-February: Dr. Nancy Wilson, Director of Lower-Division Studies; MARC graduate student and teaching assistant Edward Garza; and Twister Marquiss, Director of Texas State’s Common Reading Program. The presentation, entitled “From Common Reading to a Common Experience: Fostering a Campus-wide Conversation,” recounted the success of the 2015-2016 Common Reading book — Tomás Rivera’s …y no se lo tragó la tierra / …And the Earth Did not Devour Him — including the book’s use for the diagnostic essay in English 1310 classes.

 

MA Literature student Thais Rutledge presented “Displacing Septimus: Spatial Narrative and the Medical Gaze in Mrs. Dalloway” at the Louisville meeting of the International Virginia Woolf Society.

 

In Story Circle Book Reviews, Susan Wittig Albert reviews Susan Morrison’s book, A Medieval Woman’s Companion: Women’s Lives in the European Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016): “A Medieval Woman’s Companion is—I’m not exaggerating here—the best introduction I know of to the widely varied lives of medieval women.” Read the complete review here: http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/reviews/medievalwoman.shtml. Susan guest-blogged for medieval mystery writer Candace Robb, on “A Medieval Woman’s Companion as Inspiration for Novelists”: https://ecampion.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/a-medieval-womans-companion-as-inspiration-for-novelists/. Finally, Susan was interviewed by Madeline Barnes on Waste Studies and medieval liminality. Barnes, who was Outstanding Senior in English 2014, is currently a Masters student in Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. You can see the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS70Vrf1PX8.

 

Recent MFA fiction graduate Sarah Rafael Garcia had a story, “Selling Happiness,” published in Lumen: http://www.lumenmag.net/sarah-rafael-garcia-03. An interview regarding her work with the writing program she founded, Barrio Writers, appears in The Fem: https://thefemlitmagazine.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/featured-fem-meet-sarah-rafael-garcia/.

 

Eric Leake’s co-authored chapter “Composing Place, Composing Las Vegas” has been published in the collection Rhetorics of Names and Naming, part of the Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Composition series. His article “Empathizer-in-Chief: The Promotion and Performance of Empathy in the Speeches of Barack Obama” has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric: http://contemporaryrhetoric.com/.

 

Michael Noll’s story, “The Tank Yard,” has been selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2016. It first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Congratulations:

Doug Dorst and co-author J.J. Abrams were the recipients of the Bronze Medal for the 2015 Leserpreis, an annual prize voted on by German readers, for his their recent book, S. (German edition).

 

Susan Morrison published “Five things you might not know about medieval women – the life of St. Margaret” at Celebrate Scotland: https://www.celebrate-scotland.co.uk/News-and-Features/1975/Five_things_you_might_not_know_about_medieval_women__the_life_of_Saint_Margaret/

 

Lecturer Anne Winchell presented “Female or Male: A Not So Simple Choice” at the Southwest Popular Culture/American Culture Conference in Albuquerque, NM; along with her undergraduate student Natalie Hays, who presented “No One Expects a Female Inquisition: A Study on Gender Representation in Video Games.”

 

On February 14, Kitty Ledbetter will perform with her husband Alan Munde as part of Texas State’s Supple Music Series: http://www.finearts.txstate.edu/meta-calendar/encore-listing.html [archived].

 

Tomas Morin’s second poetry collection, Patient Zero, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in spring 2017. Also, Tomas will participate in a panel entitled “Paying It Forward: Literary Mentorship” at the Associated Writing Programs Conference next month, as well as taking part in some off-site readings.

 

Tom Grimes’s new novel will be excerpted in the next issue of Narrative magazine.

 

Sean Trolinder (MFA fiction graduate – 2012) recently had a short story, “City of Crushed Dreams,” accepted for publication in a future issue of Louisiana Literature. A draft of this story began in one of Debra Monroe’s fiction workshops.

Congratulations:

Two poems by MFA poetry student Ashton Kamburoff, “Understand James Brown” and “Benching: A Note on Passing Boxcars,” will appear in Toad Literary Journal.

 

Rob Tally’s “Spatiality’s Mirrors: Reflections on Literary Cartography” appears in the current issue of The Journal of English Language and Literature. It is an expanded version of the keynote address Rob gave at the English Language and Literature Association of Korea’s (ELLAK) annual conference in Busan this past December.

 

Alan Schaefer is now a co-editor for the Journal of Texas Music History. Alan also contributed to the journal a follow-up article on HOMEGROWN: AUSTIN MUSIC POSTERS 1967 TO 1982, the exhibition I co-curated for the Wittliff Collections in 2015 and the accompanying book he edited that was published by University of Texas Press.

 

MFA Fiction student Graham Oliver has joined Emerson College’s Ploughshares as a contributing blogger for 2016.  He will be doing a series of interviews with translators.  The first, with London-based Korean translator Deborah Smith, can be found at this link: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/sufficient-ambiguity-an-interview-with-deborah-smith/.

 

Steve Wilson has poems in New American Writing, San Pedro River Review and The Beatest State in the Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writers (Lamar University Press).

 

A Strange Object will publish Michael Noll’s book on writing, In the Beginning, Middle, and End: A Field Guide for Writing Fiction. It’s based on his craft-of-writing blog, Read to Write Stories, and will feature all-new essays and exercises built around one-page excerpts from recent and forthcoming novels and stories. The book was the focus of Michael’s Non-tenure Line Faculty Workload Release in the fall.

 

Kitty Ledbetter presented her essay, “Commodifying Patriotism: Textiles and the Mexican War,” at the MLA Convention in Austin, in January.

 

Lecturer and recent MFA in poetry graduate Vanessa Couto Johnson is the winner of Slope Editions’ Chapbook Contest for her manuscript speech rinse.

 

MATC student Kristen Sacky has accepted a position on the Order Management team at Google Inc., in Austin, Texas. Kristen will be responsible for helping clients implement Google software applications in business environments.

 

William Jensen’s newest story, “A Quiet Place to Hide,” will be in the upcoming issue of North Dakota Quarterly.  William previously read a draft of this story at the Western Literature Association conference in Reno last October.

 

MFA fiction graduate and current English Department Lecturer Cedric Synnestvedt’s short story “What the Birds Do” will appear in the next issue of The Sonora Review.

Congratulations:

Debra Monroe’s latest book, My Unsentimental Education, which was widely reviewed, was named on three “Best Ten Books of 2015” lists: in The Dallas Morning News (a national list); The San Antonio-Express News (a national list with a regional emphasis): and the Austin Chronicle (a Texas-centric list).

 

Roger Jones’ chapbook Familial was published in December by Finishing Line Press. Five of his haibun poems will appear later this year in Journeys 2016, an international anthology of haibun.

 

The Conference on College Composition and Communication has selected Miriam Williams and Octavio Pimentel’s Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication as the winner of the 2016 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Original Collection of Essays in Technical or Scientific Communication. Octavio and Miriam will be presented with the award at the Awards Session of the 2016 CCCC Convention in Houston this coming April.

 

Rob Tally’s essay “Adventures in Literary Cartography: Explorations, Representations, Projections” appears in Literature and Geography: The Writing of Space throughout History (Cambridge Scholars, 2016).  His collection of essays, Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies, co-edited with Christine M. Battista, has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

 

MATC alumnus Derek Holden accepted a position as Content Administrator at Game Stop Inc.  Derek’s duties will include creating and managing web content for Game Stop’s international ThinkGeek brand.

 

At the 2016 Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), to be held in Houston this April, Aimee Roundtree, Deb Balzhiser, and Miriam Williams will present research in a panel discussion titled, “Social Justice on Social Media: The Impact of Digital Technology on Political and Health Communication and Advocacy.” The focus of this year’s ATTW conference is citizenship and advocacy in technical communication.

 

Susan Morrison’s novel, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, has been shortlisted for the 2014-2015 Sarton Literary Award for Historical Fiction: http://www.storycircle.org/SartonLiteraryAward/pressrelease_2016.shtml.

Congratulations:

 

Becky Jackson’s book (written with Jackie Grutsch McKinney and Nicole Caswell), The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors, will be published by Utah State University Press in Fall 2016. Utah State UP is the foremost publisher of writing center research and scholarship.

 

Aimee Roundtree’s “Social Health Content and Activity on Facebook: A Survey Study,” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.

 

MFA poetry graduate and current Lecturer Vanessa Couto Johnson, along with recent MFA poetry graduates John Fry and Luisa Muradyan, has work in the latest issue of Blackbird: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v14n2/poetry.shtml.

 

The Personal Academic and Career Exploration Mentoring and Coaching Office (PACE-MAC) named Keith Needham its 2015 “Best Instructor as Part of a Team” for his work with an assigned peer mentor in his US 1100 classes. The award was announced after Needham assigned his students to work with their peer mentor in writing narratives in the fashion of the Tomas Rivera Common Experience text, . . . And The Earth Did Not Devour Him. Needham then taped the students’ presentations and produced a video of the best four narratives. The video is entitled Bridged Through Stories: . . . And Neither Did the Earth Devour Them. Keith’s strategies became part of the nominating process for PACE-MAC’s statewide recognition for use of classroom mentors. In December, The University of Texas at San Antonio named Texas State’s PACE-MAC team a recipient of the Outstanding Mentoring Program in Texas.

 

Octavio Pimentel will present “Too Mexican: Facing Racist Rhetoric,” at the Southwest Council of Latin American Studies conference, to be held February 2016 in New Orleans. Beginning next year, Octavio will serve a three-year term on the Editorial Board of College Composition and Communication, which is one of the top journals in composition.

 

Susan Morrison received a Research Enhancement Grant award of $6,560 for next year. She was one of 11 receiving awards in Liberal Arts this year.

 

The following non-tenure-line faculty in English have received a Faculty Senate Nontenure Faculty Workload Release Award for fall or spring 2016-2017: Jason Coates, Daniel Keltner, Lindy Kosmitis, and Jon Marc Smith.

 

MFA Fiction student Graham Oliver interviewed Debra Monroe about her new memoir and the genre of memoir at large for The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2015/12/the-rumpus-interview-with-debra-monroe/.