CLA: Department of English

The Dirt Riddles, a debut collection of poetry from Michael Walsh (MFA 2006), won the inaugural Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press and will be published in 2010. His fiction can be found in the 2008 anthology Fiction on a Stick (Milkweed Editions). . . . Matt Burgess (MFA 2009) will publish his debut novel Dogfight with Doubleday in fall 2010. . . . Lightsey Darst (MFA 2003) publishes her first full-length collection of poetry Find the Girl with Coffee House Press in spring 2010. Her chapbook Ginnungagap is available now from Red Dragonfly Press. . . . Erin Hart (MFA 1995), the author of Lake of Sorrows and Hallowed Ground, presents the new mystery False Mermaid (Scribner) in spring 2010. Congratulations!

Posted by Department of English at 1:35 PM | Permalink

Dislocate, the international literary magazine edited and produced by MFA graduate students in the Department of English, presents its fifth issue available at bookstores and online. The Transitions issue celebrates creative work from writers and artists on the subject of political, social, geographic and cultural transitions. The journal includes acclaimed authors Kevin Wilson, Peter Johnson, Nin Andrews, Todd Boss, and poetry by Haitian poet Jacqueline Beaugé-Rosier, published for the first time in English and French.

Posted by Department of English at 3:32 PM | Permalink

Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing Charles Baxter publishes a review of Katherine Anne Porter's Collected Stories and Other Writings (Library of America) in the June 11 New York Review of Books. "There has been a tendency among quite a few of Porter's critics," Baxter writes, "to criticize her life instead of her work and to give it low marks." While acknowledging the flatness of her novel Ship of Fools, Baxter compares her best short stories to Tolstoy's, "unsurpassed in American literature in their genre."

Posted by Department of English at 3:49 PM | Permalink

Three English BA graduates are among 14 University of Minnesota students (10 undergraduate and four graduate) who received Fulbright grants for 2009-10 to pursue graduate study in a foreign country. Daniel Groth, a 2009 summa cum laude candidate for a bachelor's in English, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grant to South Korea. Groth will assist in an English language classroom in a secondary school. Groth's long-term plans include medical school, and he intends to learn about South Korea's health care system. Carmen Price, a 2008 summa cum laude graduate in English and German studies, has received a Fulbright Full Grant to Germany. At the Free University of Berlin, Price will take graduate-level courses on intercultural education and will conduct research on German educational initiatives aimed at increasing immigrant and minority representation in higher education. She will also volunteer as a tutor in the community. Jenna Rose Smith, who graduated in 2007 with a bachelor's in English and studies in cinema and media culture, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grant to South Korea. Smith will assist in an English language classroom in a secondary school, and will pursue her interest in Korean language and film. Smith also plans to volunteer with a community organization serving people with disabilities. Congratulations!

Posted by Department of English at 8:22 AM | Permalink

The Graduate School awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for 2009-10 to the following four English PhD students: Sara Cohen for "Medical Screening: Illness, Cyber-bodies, and Digital Death in 21st- Century Visual Culture" (advisers Paula Rabinowitz and Siobhan Craig); Molly Kelley Gage for "Sorting Scraps: The Archive and the Future of Democracy" (adviser Paula Rabinowitz); Kevin Riordan for "Dying Words and the Mechanics of Haunted Reading" (adviser John Mowitt); and Sharin' Schroeder for "Non-consensus Realities: Fantasy and the Child in Victorian Religious Debates" (adviser Brian Goldberg). . . . The Graduate School also awarded Thesis Research Grants to PhD students Amy Griffiths, Nicholas Hengen, and Laura Zebuhr. Congratulations!

Posted by Department of English at 3:19 PM | Permalink

Adam Schrag has received the Graduate School’s Leonard Film Fellowship. Steve Healey will teach next year at Michigan State University as the CIC Postdoctoral Fellow. Anne Roth-Reinhardt won the Ruth Drake Dissertation Fellowship. The first Garner/McNaron/Sprengnether Dissertation Fellowship goes to Renee DeLong. Emily Anderson received the Samuel Holt Monk Memorial Prize for Published Scholarship. The two winners of the Audrey Christensen English Library Acquisition Prize are Sunyoung Ahn and Gregory Murray. Donald Swanbeck won the FLAS Fellowship for this summer and the coming academic year. Congratulations!

Posted by Department of English at 3:25 PM | Permalink

The Graduate Research Partnership Program Fellowships this year go to: Sara Cohen for "Watching While Looking Away" (Project adviser: Jani Scandura); Molly Kelley Gage for "Sorting Scraps: The Archive and the Future of Democracy" (Paula Rabinowitz); Eun Joo Kim for "Modern Structural Shifts and Postmodern Concerns: Reading the Korean Language in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee" (Jigna Desai); Joshua Mabie for "'Finding the Place': T.S. Eliot's Search for Dwelling in the English Landscape" (Edward Griffin); Edward McPherson for "America, 1899: A Novella" (Charles Baxter); Joshua Morsell for "Threats, Bombs, and Frame-Ups: The Dirty History of the Timber Wars" (Dan Philippon); Kevin Riordan for "Noh Archives and the Global Repertoire" (Josephine Lee); Maurits Van Bever Donker for "Writing the subject after Apartheid, or learning to 'learn to live'" (Quadri Ismail); and Jewon Woo for "'Feel Right': Creating the Culture of Critical Sympathy and the Amistad in 1839" (John Wright)

Posted by Department of English at 2:58 PM | Permalink

The Graduate School awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for 2009-10 to the following four English PhD students: Sara Cohen, Molly Kelley Gage, Kevin Riordan, and Sharin' Schroeder. The Graduate School also awarded Thesis Research Grants to PhD students Amy Griffiths, Nicholas Hengen, and Laura Zebuhr. . . . The Graduate Research Partnership Program Fellowships were awarded to: Sara Cohen, Molly Kelley Gage, Eun Joo Kim, Joshua Mabie, Edward McPherson, Joshua Morsell, Joshua Ostergaard, Kevin Riordan, Maurits Van Bever Donker, Jewon Woo, and a DOVE GRPP to Davu Seru. . . . The first Garner-McNaron-Sprengnether Fellowship for summer research was awarded to Renee DeLong. The Ruth Drake Fellowship was awarded to Anne Roth-Reinhardt. The recipient of the 2009 Samuel Holt Monk Memorial Prize for Published Scholarship is Emily Anderson. . . . Adam Schrag has received the Graduate School’s Leonard Film Fellowship. Steve Healey will teach next year at Michigan State University as the CIC Postdoctoral Fellow. The two winners of the Audrey Christensen English Library Acquisition Prize are Sunyoung Ahn and Gregory Murray. Congratulations to all!

Posted by Department of English at 2:42 PM | Permalink

MFA candidates Colleen Coyne and Sheena K. Fallon each received a Gesell Summer Residency (two weeks) at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota. . . . Winners of the Marcella DeBourg Fellowships ($1000) this year are Coyne and Eric Brownell. The fellowships are offered annually to Department of English graduate students interested in "giving creative expression to women's lives." Congratulations!

Posted by Department of English at 10:33 AM | Permalink

On Thursday May 7, English professor Julie Schumacher, the outgoing director of Creative Writing, was a guest on MPR's Midmorning show talking about the emerging writers who may be the next literary stars. Among her recommendations: Wells Taylor's short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Kao Kalia Yang's memoir The Late Homecomer, and Karen Russell's collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

Posted by Department of English at 10:08 AM | Permalink

The English Department would like to invite you & yours to join us in celebration of the 2009 English B.A. Commencement.

Open House & Reception
Friday, May 8, 2009
4:00-6:00 p.m.
207A Lind Hall
207 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

The celebration includes graduates and their guests, CLA advisers, and English Department faculty, instructors, and staff.

Please RSVP with the number attending by Monday, May 4, 2009 to Mona Fattah - monaf@umn.edu

Posted by cour0096 at 1:19 PM | Permalink

Ivory Tower, the undergraduate literary and art journal of the University of Minnesota, has published its 2008-09 issue. Look for it at racks around campus, especially in Lind Hall, Coffman Union, and Wilson Library. Ivory Tower is created by and for undergraduate students as part of a year-long English course open to upper division English, Art, and Journalism majors (ENGL3711/3713). The 2008-09 issue launch party takes place 7 pm Saturday May 9 in the Mississippi Room (third floor) of Coffman Union. Writers will read from their selections, and Lucy Michelle, who contributed a music track to last year's issue, will perform. The event is free and open to the public.

Posted by Department of English at 1:11 PM | Permalink

Daryl Parks (BA honors 1994) was profiled in the Star Tribune Wednesday feature "Professor's life took dramatic turns; now he guides others." After his BA, Parks earned two more degrees at the University of Minnesota (MEd and PhD) and now is associate professor of literature and language at Metropolitan State University. . . . Adjunct assistant professor of English Michael Tortorello, who teaches Introduction to Editing, on April 1 started writing a gardening blog for the New York Times. . . . The Ivory Tower undergraduate literary and arts magazine (see above) is featured in the Minnesota Daily.

Posted by Department of English at 2:54 PM | Permalink

Brian Malloy (MFA 2006) won the Minnesota Book Award for young people's literature for his novel Twelve Long Months (Scholastic). The awards were announced Saturday April 25 at the 21st Minnesota Book Awards gala event in St. Paul. Malloy is currently teaching Introduction to Creative Writing for the Department of English. This year's nominations for the Minnesota Book Awards included books from three Creative Writing professors (Julie Schumacher, Charles Baxter, and Ray Gonzalez), two MFA alumni (Laura Flynn and Malloy), two MA alumna (Margaret Hasse and Alison McGhee), and one BA alumnus (Tim Nolan)

Posted by Department of English at 1:37 PM | Permalink

In case you haven't seen them already, Ivory Tower has released their 2009 edition!

You can find copies available in most buildings on campus! However, if you want a few extra copies you can check out Lind Hall!

Thanks to everyone at Ivory Tower for all their hard work. Congratulations to everyone that was published!

Check out your peers' works in the 2009 edition of Ivory Tower.

Posted by capod001 at 11:51 AM | Permalink