« June 2009 | Main | August 2009 »

July 22, 2009

Department Welcomes Interim Chair

Image of Professor SircGeoffrey Sirc (PhD 1985) is now serving as the interim chair of the Department of English. Professor Sirc is the author of English Composition as a Happening (Utah State University Press, 2002) and, with Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, and Cynthia L. Selfe, Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition (Utah State UP, 2004). He joined the Department in 2006 from the University of Minnesota General College. Former chair Paula Rabinowitz wrapped up her three-year term at the end of June. The Department offers our thanks for her dedicated service! . . .Thank you also to Professors Lois Cucullu and Julie Schumacher, who finished their terms as Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Creative Writing Program, respectively. Professor Ray Gonzalez takes over as the Director of the Creative Writing Program. Regents Professor Madelon Sprengnether is Director of Graduate Studies.

July 2, 2009

MFA Alumni Awards & Publications

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!