News

English senior Joshua Capodarco has won the College of Liberal Arts Stark Award, which was created based on a generous donation from Dr. Matthew "Matt" Stark, a former professor at the University of Minnesota and former executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. The award recognizes a CLA student who has demonstrated "distinguished service, writing, teaching, involvement, or public leadership in one of more of the following areas: civil liberties, civil rights, public education and social justice." The honor is presented annually at the December CLA Commencement Ceremony and carries with it a financial award of $1000. Capodarco has an extensive background in service learning, taught English in Senegal (he wrote about it here), and is currently serving as undergraduate TA for the English course Literature of Public Life. Congratulations Josh!

Alumnus Garrison Keillor (BA 1966) stopped by the English course "Introduction to Creative Writing" last week and told students: "The world is waiting to hear from you. We're bored with our own generation." More....

Two English faculty contributed to A New Literary History of America, the well-reviewed Harvard University Press collection edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors which covers American culture since 1507 via literature (and blues and FDR's fireside chats, etc.). David Treuer was on the editorial board and contributed two essays, one on Longfellow's Hiawatha, and Paula Rabinowitz wrote about the aforesaid FDR.

The Department of English's Creative Writing MFA Program is ranked 14 in a listing of the top 50 MFA programs in Poets & Writers's November/December issue. The ranking is based on an on-line list maintained by poet Seth Abramson and based upon research and MFA applicant surveys. The top 20 ranking reflects the Program's (and the Department's) dedication to full-funding for each MFA candidate, the strength of its faculty (60 plus books published in a decade), and the impressive record of alumni accomplishments. Cheers!

Long-time Department of English lecturer Eric Daigre (PhD 2001) writes about literacy and service learning-oriented English courses for the new issue of Diversity & Democracy produced by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). The article is entitled "Literature, Literacy, and Multiculturalism in the Expanded Classroom." . . . English professor David Treuer wrote the article "I'm Holding Out for an Anti-Hero" for the LA Times. . . . MFA alumna Laurie Lindeen offers a music-influenced craft essay in Columbia College's literary journal Fictionary.

Five current or recently graduated English BAs contributed to the August-September issue of Alive Magazine, a national publication by and for young women that kicks the usual "celebrities, sex, and dieting" content to the curb. Two are Alive interns who wrote and/or designed for the issue: Regan Smith (BA '09) and undergraduate Meghan Hanson. Former Alive intern Jamie Joslin Millard (BA '09) is now Alive's development director. Spring '09 graduates Allie Riley and Derek Swart also wrote for the issue. All but Riley were members of the 2009 Ivory Tower staff, Hanson as co-Editor-in-Chief; Riley published a poem in the latest Ivory Tower, which is the undergraduate literary magazine of the University of Minnesota created by a year-long English course.

Geoffrey 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.

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!

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.

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."

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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)

The 2009 Gesell Award winners in creative writing are: Josh Morsell, Creative Nonfiction (Honorable Mention: Heather McPherson); Matt Burgess, Fiction; and Brian Laidlaw, Poetry. . . . First-year PhD student Donald Swanbeck (medieval field) won two of the very competitive FLAS fellowships to study Arabic during summer 2009 and academic year 2009-2010. . . . The 2009 ArtWords: Writing at the Weisman Contest winner, Graduate Category, is Brian Laidlaw for "Persephone Creates the Seasons," based on "Cross with Red Heart" by Georgia O'Keeffe. The Undergraduate Category winner is Misha Levchenko for "Justification for the Existence of Liars" based on "World's Fair Mural" by James Rosenquist. . . . Undergraduate Studies student engagement research assistant and English major Josh Capodarco won a President's Student Leadership Award, presented to approximately one-half of one percent of the student body for their exceptional leadership and service to the University of Minnesota and the surrounding community. Congratulations to all!

Charles Baxter's story, "Royal Blue," which appeared in the Spring 2008 American Scholar, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. The winners will be announced at an event at New York's Lincoln Center on April 30. . . . Congratulations to MFA candidates Shantha Susman and Katie Leo, who were awarded this year's Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize in Poetry. The judge was poet Kathleen Jesme. Leo, who won the 2009 Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship, summarizes her activities in the Human Rights Program Update February issue.

The Imagine Fund Annual Awards this year became available to University of Minnesota faculty for research in the arts, design, and the humanities through a generous grant from the McKnight Foundation and new internal reallocations from the University of Minnesota Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Of the 217 awards representing $651,000 in support, 16 awards went to English faculty. Our 2009 winners: Timothy Brennan, Tony C. Brown, Michael Dennis Browne, Evelyn Ch'ien, Siobhan Craig, Lois Cucullu, Maria Damon, Genevieve Escure, Ray Gonzalez, Michael Hancher, Qadri Ismail, Ellen Messer-Davidow, Paula Rabinowitz, Katherine Scheil, Charles Sugnet, and Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley.

English department staff member Mona Fattah has been accepted into the Occupational Therapy Masters Program within the Center for Allied Health Programs (CAHP). She was able to complete the prerequisite coursework through the Regents Scholarship Program.

Regents Professor Patricia Hampl's "The Dark Art of Description" has been selected for the anthology Best American Essays 2009. The essay was formerly published in the spring 2008 Iowa Review. . . . A story by third-year MFA candidate Ethan Rutherford was chosen for Best American Short Stories 2009. "The Peripatetic Coffin" first appeared in the spring 2008 American Short Fiction, which is currently featuring the story online.

Professor Josephine Lee has received an Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education Award, one of eight recipients across the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. The award ceremony will take place April 27 at the McNamara Alumni Center. Professor Lee previously won the Horace T. Morse-Minnesota Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education in 2002-03.

MFA alums and an MFA candidate won three of seven 2009 SASE/Jerome Awards, sponsored by the Jerome Foundation, which grant up to $3,000 to emerging Minnesota writers. The winners: poet Michelle Matthees (MFA 2001), novelist Scott Muskin (MFA 1998), and current fiction third year Ethan Rutherford.

Madelon Sprengnether, who was named Regents Professor in 2008, is featured in UMNews. The interview tracks her interests from Shakespeare to current theories on memory. "I've been lucky to be at a university, in a department, and in a particular moment of time when I could follow my interests," she notes. Regents Professor Sprengnether is currently writing a book-length memoir titled My Ghostly Stepfather.

Kate Hopper (MFA 2004) contributed the entry "Afraid to Love Her Preemie" to the New York Times blog Motherlode February 12. Hopper writes frequently about mothering, writing, and teaching on her own blog Mother Words and teaches writing at the Loft Writing Center in Minneapolis.

Professor Michael Dennis Browne's oratorio with composer Stephen Paulus To Be Certain of the Dawn is now out on BIS Records. . . . Professors Ellen Messer-Davidow and David Treuer are featured in the winter 2009 issue of the CLA magazine Reach. . . . English is one of seven University departments system-wide to win a $10,000 Engaged Department Grant from the Office of Public Engagement. The grants are meant to advance the integration of public engagement into department research and teaching. . . . Screenwriting instructor John Olive opened a new play Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire at Seattle Children's Theatre. . . . Professor Charles Baxter's novel The Soul Thief is out in paperback.

Professor Julie Schumacher's novel Black Box has been named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. . . . Nominations for Minnesota Book Awards include three Creative Writing professors (Schumacher, Charles Baxter, and Ray Gonzalez), three MFA alumni (Laura Flynn, Joe Hart, and Brian Malloy), two MA alumna (Margaret Hasse and Alison McGhee), and one BA alumnus (Tim Nolan). . . . MFA alumna Flynn, author of the memoir Swallow the Ocean, also took home a "Keeper" award in late January from Metro magazine. . . . 2009 SASE/Jerome finalists include MFA alums Michael J. Opperman, Scott Muskin, Margie Newman and Michelle Matthees, as well as current MFAs Libby Edelson and Ethan Rutherford. Congratulations to all!

PhD candidate Steve Healey published part of his dissertation project in the February issue of Writer's Chronicle. His article is entitled "The Rise of Creative Writing and the New Value of Creativity." Healey will be presenting "The Creative Writing Boom and the Poetics of Post-Industrial America" as part of our eNow! "Poetics, Politics, and Place" series February 23 at 2:30 pm in Lind Hall 207A. . . . Professor Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley was chosen a Spring 2010 Institute for Advanced Study Faculty Fellow for her project “Water, Shoulders, Into the Black Pacific."

The staff of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis now counts three English alums on its nine-person staff, including President and Director Judi Dutcher (BA 1984). Curator of Russian Art and Artifacts Maria Zavialova received her PhD in English and Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in 2008, and Misha Dashevsky (BA 1999) serves as assistant to the President. The stunning exhibit Transcendent Art: Icons from Yaroslavl, Russia winds up on Saturday January 24: 54 icons painted in the 17th and 18th centuries are on display, on loan from the Yaroslavl Art Museum. Upcoming exhibits include Russkiy Salon: Select Favorites and Newly Revealed Works, opening February 2, and Postage Stamps: Messengers of the Soviet Future, opening March 7.

Poet Alex Lemon (MFA 2004) is featured in the January issue of Esquire magazine. He is one of seven men whose job it is, write the editors, to "make sense of the world and make us laugh, think, and question our way to a little bit of wisdom . . . and a sharp sense of winter style." Lemon's "from Halleluja Blackout" (title poem of his latest Milkweed collection) was chosen by Charles Wright for the Best American Poetry 2008 anthology. A memoir from Scribner is forthcoming.

English and philosophy senior Sarah Choy was honored at the 2008 Equity and Diversity Breakfast November 20 at the McNamara Center with a $1000 Sue W. Hancock SEED of Change Award. The awards go to students engaged with issues of equity and diversity through outstanding academic achievement and activism. Choy is involved with the English Undergraduate Studies Committee, Minnesota Rainbow Alliance for the Deaf, and Mu Daiko Theater. Along with her major coursework, she has taken American Sign Language classes. "Although my main fields of study are English and Philosophy," notes Choy, "I find myself pouring a lot of my energy into the American Sign Language Department as a tutor. A few years ago, my mother found herself on her way to Deafness which drove me to learning the language; the University has given me the skill to communicate with her."

Department of English faculty have produced a bounty of books this fall. Professor Timothy Brennan published Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz (Verso), which "shows how the popular music of the Americas — the music of entertainment, nightlife, and leisure — is involved in a devotion to an African religious worldview that survived the ravages of slavery and found its way into the rituals of everyday listening." Professor Andrew Elfenbein's Romanticism and the Rise of English (Stanford University Press) "points to new directions in literary criticism by arguing for the need to reconceptualize authorial agency in light of a broadened understanding of linguistic history." Professor Ray Gonzalez published his third collection of nonfiction essays, Renaming the Earth (University of Arizona Press), reflecting on the American Southwest, where he was raised. Finally, Professor Nabil Matar's Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578-1727 (Columbia University Press) "assembles a rare history of Europe's rise to power as seen through the eyes of those who were later subjugated by it." Congratulations to all!

The cover story of the November Mpls St. Paul Magazine lists the 75 "Best Brains" in the Twin Cities, one of which belongs to English professor and poet Maria Damon. Editors Brian Lambert and Bill Swanson talk about the feature. . . . English professor and Creative Writing Program director Julie Schumacher visited the Today Show on October 28, updating her New York Times "Modern Love" article about the mothers support group she found when her family battled a daughter's clinical depression. Schumacher has received excellent notices (starred review in Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, etc.) for her latest book for younger readers, Black Box, about a girl whose sister is hospitalized for depression.

English Professor Emeritus Peter Firchow died October 18, 2008. A member of the Department for 40 years, Professor Firchow focused on British literature in his teaching and extensive writing. In the last year he published two books, Modern Utopian Fictions from Wells to Murdoch and Strange Meetings: Anglo-German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1960 (both Catholic University of America Press). "Above all, he was a tremendous scholar," notes Professor Emeritus Peter Reed, in a Star Tribune obituary. He is survived by his wife Evelyn, a professor of German at the University, and daughter Pamina.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Debra Blake published her first book Chicana Sexuality and Gender: Cultural Refiguring in Literature, Oral History and Art with Duke University Press in October. Blake is currently teaching the second Survey of American Literatures and Cultures class and Literacy and American Cultural Diversity for the Department of English.

An entertaining aside in the New York Times Style magazine "Fall Travel" edition cites Professor David Treuer along with FlatPak house architect Charles Lazor as evidence of the Twin Cities' healthy intellectual climate. The article, about up-and-coming second tier cities, names Minneapolis-St. Paul the "new New York."

Every year English professor and Creative Writing Program core faculty member Michael Dennis Browne lends his cabin compound in the north woods to MFA graduate students in creative writing. The 2008 "Cry of the Loon Retreat," which took place in late September, is documented in photos by MFA candidate Molly Sutton Kiefer.

MFA candidate Benjamin Arda Doty was shortlisted for Ireland’s Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize. The winner is Julia Van Middlesworth. Doty was one of nine runners-up, chosen from over 700 entries. Doty's fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of literary journals. He spoke with Pike Magazine about being recognized for his work in Ireland.

eNow! co-sponsors a rare appearance by poet, essayist, and translator Nathaniel Tarn at the Twin Cities Book Festival 11:30 am Saturday October 11, 2008. A respected anthropologist as well as a writer, the poet weaves "mythology and philosophy, nature and science, and anguish and love into a moving exploration of what it means to be human." Free and open to the public.

Robert Meeropol, younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, visits the Department of English amid new revelations and renewed commentary about his parents' participation in espionage in the early '50s and their execution. In his talk October 6, at 4:30 pm, Meeropol will address these developments in addition to speaking on literary representations of the Rosenbergs, such as E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel. Meeropol is the author of We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975) with his brother Michael, and An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey (2003). There will be a reception for Meeropol at 3:30 pm before the talk. Lind Hall, 207 Church St. S.E., Minneapolis (lecture in room 150; reception in room 207A).

Department of English professor and Creative Writing Program chair Julie Schumacher has received the first College of Continuing Education Distinguished Educator Award. CCE Dean Mary L. Nichols cited Schumacher as a "firm champion of CCE programs in other parts of the University" and noted her "extraordinary history" of participation with CCE programs Compleat Scholar, U Reads, College in the Schools, and the Split Rock Arts Program. On October 23, 2008, Schumacher will be presented with a plaque and a $2000 award at the annual CCE Celebration in Coffman Union. Schumacher also celebrates the publication of Black Box (Delacorte), her fourth novel for young readers, on Friday September 19 at 7 pm at the Loft Literary Center.

The Department of English welcomes LaRose Davis, who won the prestigious Graduate School Postdoctoral Fellowship and chose to be housed in English. Davis comes from Emory University where her work has centered on African American and American Indian literary and cultural intersections. Olabode Ibironke will be our CIC Postdoctoral Fellow: He has a doctorate from Michigan State University and specializes in African literary history and postcolonial literary theory. Jan Hein Hoogstad is a visiting assistant professor fall semester from the University of Amsterdam; he is teaching Medial Operations: Sound, Music & Digitality. Other visiting adjunct faculty include Debra Blake, Joe Hughes, Tim Jones, Emily Swanson (PhD 2008), and Michael Tortorello. Finally our CIC Fellow from last year, Dan Mrozowski, who students voted "best lecturer of 2008," returns this year to teach a variety of courses on American literature and literary theory.

The Department of English's continuing website feature 5 Questions + spotlights New Yorker Amy Shearn (MFA 2005), who publishes her debut novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here? in August 2008 with Shaye Areheart/Random House. Read more.

PhD candidate Ann Pitugshatwong will defend her dissertation on Friday, September 5 from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in Lind Hall, Room 202. Her dissertation is titled "Crossing Boundaries: Domestic Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Women's Travel Narratives." All are welcome to attend.

Professor Julie Schumacher wrote the "Modern Love" column in the Sunday, July 6, 2008, New York Times. Schumacher, the director of the Creative Writing Program, will in September publish Black Box, her fourth novel for juvenile readers. Her last such book won a 2007 Minnesota Book Award.

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents named professor Madelon Sprengnether one of four new Regents Professors. The designation is the highest level of recognition given to faculty by the University. Sprengnether, a core faculty member of the Creative Writing Program, has published poetry (The Angel of Duluth), memoir (Crying at the Movies), and criticism. She won a 2003-04 University award for Distinguished Contributions to Post-Baccalaureate Graduate and Professional Education. She joins Tom Clayton and Patricia Hampl as Regents Professors within the Department of English; the only other University department with three Regents Professors is Chemical Engineering.

Associate professor David Treuer is interviewed by American Public Media's Krista Tippett about his recent project, with brother Anton Treuer, compiling the first practical grammar of the Ojibwe language. Professor Treuer describes an unfolding experience of how language forms what makes us human. Some memories and realities, he has found, can only be carried forward in time by Ojibwe. The radio show, part of the series Speaking of Faith, which broadcast in the Twin Cities Sunday, June 22, on KNOW 91.1 FM is now available on-line.

PhD candidate Mitch Ogden will defend his dissertation "Refugee Utopias: (Re)Theorizing Refugeeism through the Cultural Production of the Hmong Diaspora" at 10 am June 26, 2008, in Lind 207A. Ogden examines how Hmong magnetic media (audio and video cassettes) shape a novel concept of homeland, how the many competing Hmong writing systems challenge and uphold cultural and political ideologies, and how a burgeoning literary movement reflects the energy of a dynamic global diaspora. Throughout, he proposes that the persistent cultural image of refugee-as-perpetual-victim be updated, expanded, and discarded in favor of a view that acknowledges the vibrant, creative force of cultural production that animates contemporary refugee communities.

Lois Cucullu (English) and John Campbell (Psychology) share the "Best DGS" award for 2008. A special committee appointed by the dean of the Graduate School selects the recipients. Each receives a $1,000 honorarium and a plaque. There will be a reception to honor the award winners at a celebration on Wednesday, May 14, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in the Upson Room of Walter Library.

English Literature PhD and Creative Writing MFA defenses are taking place through May 23. PhD candidate Sara Berrey will defend her dissertation at 8:45 am May 14 in Lind 202, followed by PhD candidate Jean Jacobson 1 pm May 23 in Lind 207. MFA candidates defend their creative theses in Lind 207 as follows. May 12: Emily Bright at 1:30 pm. May 13: Phillip Fuller at 9 am; Karen Ahn at noon; and Andrew Luckham at 2:30 pm. May 14: Karen Stout at 10 am; Ann Linde at noon; and Nathan Slawson at 2:30 pm. May 15: Brett Gastineau at noon. May 16: Tara DaPra at 9 am; Jake Mohan at 2:30 pm. For more information, contact the Graduate Studies and Creative Writing Program offices.

A new volume of LUNA: a journal of poetry and translation has just been released. Edited by professor Ray Gonzalez and MFA alum Alex Lemon, the issue features the work of Robert Bly, Jaswinder Bolina, Juan Felipe Herrera, Major Jackson, George Kalamaras, Alessandra Lynch, Simone Muench, Joan Murray, Craig Morgan Teicher, translations of Luis Cernuda (by Ruben Quesada) and Nguyen Do (by Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover), and much more. Please visit LUNA for ordering information.

Assistant professor Siobhan Craig received the Ruth Christie Distinguished Teaching Award for English for 2008-10. The Ruth Christie prize is decided by undergraduate student voting.

The Department of English MFA / Dislocate Reading Series holds its final 2007-08 event Tuesday, April 29th at 7 pm in Lind Hall 150. Edelstein-Keller Professor in Creative Writing Charles Baxter will read, along with MFA candidates Matthew Burgess, Thomas Cook, and Emily Freeman.

Help celebrate the 2008 issue of the Ivory Tower! You are invited to the launch party of the undergraduate art and literary magazine on Friday, April 25 from 7 to 9 pm in room 120 of the Elmer L. Andersen Library (located on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota). The evening will feature readings of several chosen submissions, live music, and the awarding of $100 for the winning entries in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. A dessert reception will follow.

The 2008 Minnesota Book Awards were announced at a gala award ceremony Saturday, April 12th in St. Paul, hosted by Cathy Wurzer of Minnesota Public Radio. Edelstein-Keller Professor in Creative Writing Charles Baxter won the Award for General Nonfiction for The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (Graywolf Press), which the judges termed an "absolutely stellar explication of texts." Regents Professor Patricia Hampl won the Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction for The Florist’s Daughter (Harcourt), described by the judges as "eloquent, bittersweet and consistently well-written." In addition, 2006-07 Edelstein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction Deborah Keenan won the Award for Poetry for Willow Room, Green Door (Milkweed Editions) and spring 2003 Edelstein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction Wang Ping won the Award for Novel & Short Story for The Last Communist Virgin (Coffee House Press).

Congratulations to MFA candidates Emily Freeman and Shantha Susman, who are first and second place prize winners (graduate student category) in this year's ArtWords contest. They will read their work at the ArtWords and ArtSounds Program and Reception 7 pm April 16 at the Weisman Museum. Come hear them read their work at the Weisman on April 16. This is the 10th anniversary of the ArtWords program, in which students write short poems, prose, and (now) musical compositions in response to work in the Weisman's galleries. Reception follows.

Department of English professor Andrew P. Scheil's book The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (University of Michigan Press, 2004) was awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s 2008 John Nicholas Brown Prize for a first book in the medieval field judged to be of outstanding quality. The award was presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Vancouver, B.C., April 3-5, 2008. The award citation read, in part: "Scheil adds considerable nuance to our understanding of the place (imaginary or otherwise) of Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. However, this study makes a contribution beyond the confines of the Anglo-Saxon period, addressing in detail the function and character of medieval exegesis, of the dialectics of religious thought, and of hermeneutics more generally." Professor Scheil has also received a Solmsen Fellowship for academic year 2008-2009 at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The GSO and the Nineteenth-Century British Subfield Symposium takes place Saturday, April 5, from 8 am to 4 pm in Lind Hall 207A. Graduate students from our department and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will present papers, including: Kate Hannah, "Threats to Masculine Roles, Male Poets, and the Production and Performance of Poetry in the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson"; Brenda Helt, "The Victorian Violet Soul: Homospirituality before 'Homosexuality'"; Heather McNeff, "Invitation and Anxiety in the Early Poetry of William Jones"; Sunyoung Ahn, "Liberty and its Use in J.S. Mill's 'On Liberty'"; and Sharin' Schroeder on Lewis Carroll. The Medieval & Early Modern Research Group holds its annual colloquium with guest speaker Katherine Zieman from the University of Notre Dame on Friday, April 11, starting at 11 am in Nolte 235. Graduate students and topics are: John Sievers, "Dryden's Battle with Music in King Arthur: The Bracegirdle Hurdle"; Christopher Flack, "'Mearcstapa': The Acculturation of the Liminal"; and Lindsay Craig, "Damned by Saints Praised: The Old Woman's Invocations in Le Roman de la Rose."

Brown University professor Nancy Armstrong presents "Gender Must Be Defended" as the 45th Joseph Warren Beach Lecture in Literature 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 9, at the Weisman Museum. Professor Armstrong is visiting as part of the spring 2008 Department of English series Impacts: Feminist Theory and British Literary Studies. Professor Armstrong is the author of How Novels Think: British Fiction and the Limits of Individualism (Columbia University Press, 2005); Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism (Harvard University Press, 1999); and Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford University Press, 1987). Her fields of interest include 18th-and 19th-century British and American fiction, empire and sexuality, narrative theory, critical theory, and visual culture. Reception to follow.

Congratulations to the recipients of 2008 Gesell Awards in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction and Poetry, given to MFA candidates within the Creative Writing Program. Luke Pingel won for poetry, with Jim Novak as honorable mention. The co-recipients for creative nonfiction are Wilson Peden and Katie Leo, with Holly Vanderhaar as honorable mention. Ethan Rutherford won the fiction award, with Laura Owen as honorable mention. The judges were poet Eleanor Lerman, creative nonfiction writer Fenton Johnson, and fiction writer Jim Shepard.

The Department of English welcomes prospective graduate students March 26-30. Events scheduled include a faculty roundtable, library visit, tour of the Twin Cities, and meeting with graduate students. We look forward to meeting you!

The Esther Freier Endowment presents Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, speaking 7:30 pm, Wednesday, March 26, at the Ted Mann Concert Hall--a free event and open to the public. No tickets necessary. Parks is the author of Topdog/Underdog, Venus, and In the Blood. The Framing Suzan-Lori Parks series, presented with the Department of Theatre, Frank Theatre, the Playwrights' Center, and McKnight Special Events, concludes Tuesday, April 1, with a discussion of Parks' place in the history of African American theater. Panelists include e. g. bailey, Pamela Fletcher, Josephine Lee, Alexs Pate, and Dominic Taylor (7:30 pm, Cowles Auditorium).

English faculty Charles Baxter and Patricia Hampl are finalists for 2008 Minnesota Book Awards: Baxter in the General Nonfiction category for The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (Graywolf), and Hampl in Memoir and Creative Nonfiction for The Florist's Daughter (Harcourt). Other finalists include Eireann Lorsung (MFA '06) for Music for Landing Planes By (Poetry), William Reichard (PhD '97) for This Brightness (Poetry), and Joni Tevis (Edelstein-Keller Discovery Fellow 2003-2005) for The Wet Collection (Memoir and Creative Nonfiction). Winners will be announced April 12, 2008.

English professor and chair Paula Rabinowitz will be honored February 13 as the 2008 CLA Dean's Medalist. Rabinowitz will present the address "Chairs: Frida's Hair/Vincent's Ears" at the program, which begins at 3 pm, in Cowles Auditorium. The CLA Dean's Medal was created by an anonymous donor to reward a faculty member's excellence in scholarship or creative activity. Rabinowitz is Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities.

Carol Bly, St. Paul essayist, fiction writer, teacher, and inspiration to many, died December 21 of cancer at age 77. Bly served as a Department of English Minnesota Writer of Distinction in 1998-1999: She taught Topics in Advanced Creative Writing: The Literary Essay, did a public reading at the Weisman Museum, and served as a thesis advisor. Among Bly's many celebrated books are: Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction (Anchor Books), My Lord Bag of Rice: New and Collected Stories (Milkweed Editions), and Letters from the Country (University of Minnesota Press). Bly will be honored from 2 to 5 pm on Feb. 10 at Hamline University's Sundin Music Hall, 1536 Hewitt Ave., St. Paul. A program will begin at 3 pm.

Two graduate students are published in the Winter 2007-08 Rain Taxi Review of Books: Nick Hengen reviews Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism is a Humanism in the print edition, and Ryan Cox interviews legendary Canadian poet Steve McCaffery in the on-line issue.

Two of the Department of English's literary magazines have revamped their websites. Dislocate was founded as a new media journal of the arts in 2001 by students in the MFA program in Creative Writing. In 2004-05, Dislocate established itself as a print journal. . . . The Ivory Tower is the literary and art magazine created by undergraduates in a year-long English course. In various guises, the Ivory Tower has published University of Minnesota undergraduate art, photography, prose, and poetry since the 1950s. . . . In addition, new poetry reviews from our graduate students can be found on the Luna site. Luna: a Journal of Poetry and Translation is edited by professor Ray Gonzalez.

"from Hallelujah Blackout," by alum Alex Lemon, will be included in the 2008 edition of Best American Poetry, selected by Charles Wright. Alex's chapbook Abracadaver is in the most recent issue of Black Warrior Review. Another chapbook, At Last Unfolding Congo, was just released by horse less press. . . . Alums Michael Seward, Jay Orff, and Kate Hopper received 2008 Minnesota State Arts Board Grants. . . . Alums Laura Flynn, Rachel Moritz, and Charlie Conley received SASE Emerging Artist Fellowships for 2008. Alum Carla-Elaine Johnson was a finalist. . . . Alum Karen Rigby has a poem forthcoming in Black Warrior Review.

MFA candidate Dhana-Marie Branton (nonfiction) received an SASE Emerging Writer Fellowship and a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant for 2008. MFA candidates Emily August (poetry) and Emily Freeman (fiction) were finalists for the SASE fellowship. . . . MFA candidate Laura Owen (fiction) received a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant for 2008 and was also a finalist for the SASE fellowship. . . . MFA candidate Katie Leo-Keast received a Cultural Collaboration Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board in collaboration with Stages Theatre Company in Hopkins. She has been commissioned to adapt the children's book Baseball Saved Us. The book is about Japanese internment camps, and the grant will enable Katie to travel to LA and conduct archival research at the National Japanese American Museum. . . . MFA alum Amanda Fields has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her short story "Boiler Room," featured in the Indiana Review.

Regent Professor Patricia Hampl's fifth memoir, The Florist's Daughter, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2007 in the Sunday Book Review.

Professor Madelon Sprengnether will read from her poetry in the Carol Connolly S.A.S.E. Intermedia Arts reading series on Tuesday, December 18, 7:30 pm, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul; 651-222-1751. Other writers in this holiday celebration reading include: Patricia Barone, Jill Breckenridge, Candy Clayton, Phebe Hanson, Freya Manfred, Cynthia French, and "Minnesota Rollergirl" Dottie Hazard.

Current MFA candidates Kevin O'Rourke (poetry), Jake Mohan (nonfiction), and Philip Fuller (fiction) will read Tuesday, December 4, at 7 pm, along with Creative Writing Program Director Julie Schumacher, who will unveil a new story. Lind 150, Taylor Library. . . . MFA alum Margie Newman reads with Sandra Benitez and Donna Trump in a Loft Mentor Series Reading 7 pm Friday, November 30, at Open Book (1011 Washington Ave. S., Mpls.). . . . MFA alum Eric Dregni presents a reading, quiz and slide show regarding his books Midwest Marvels and Weird Minnesota at Common Good Books (Selby & Western, St. Paul) at 7 pm, Saturday, December 1. . . . MFA alums Amanda Coplin and Susan Taylor read at the Happy Gnome (498 Selby Avenue, St. Paul) Tuesday, December 4 at 5 pm.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon will talk about "The Eternity of the Poem" this Wednesday November 28, at 7:30 pm, in Coffman Theater. Muldoon is most currently the author of the collection Horse Latitudes. In a recent interview, he states, "All my books are potboilers." The Esther Freier Endowed Lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book-signing and reception.

Last summer, Michael Tisserand (B.A. ’92) published Sugarcane Academy, about his family's experiences in the post-Katrina diaspora. On Sunday, November 25 at 7 pm, Magers & Quinn will host a reading and celebration with Tisserand, featuring the band The Southside Aces and a brief slideshow of the New Orleans photos of David Rae Morris (also a U of M grad). We recently interviewed Tisserand in our Alumni & Community website pages.

Brooks Doherty (BA Honors magna cum laude 2005) is co-founder and managing editor of the new Twin Cities-based on-line arts journal Pike Magazine. Pike's stated mission is to bring to public notice those artists, writers, and musicians for whom "art swims in their marrow. They must create it. They must share it or fold." The November issue notably features six poems from Paul Muldoon, who will be our Esther Freier Endowed Lecturer on Wednesday, November 28, at 7:30 pm in Coffman Memorial Theater. Doherty also contributes to the lively Pike blog, which has name-checked professor Michael Dennis Browne, among other University of Minnesota references.

Melinda Braun (BA 2006) has published Luella (Savage Press), a children's picture book about a young duck and the family dog she takes as her mother. . . . Leigh Herrick (BA 1988) publishes two of her poems in Cost of Freedom: The Anthology of Peace and Activism (Howling Dog Press).

The Department of English's eNow! series of faculty and graduate student presentations continues with a special program on language: English associate professor Evelyn Ch'ien addresses the question "Is English Getting Weirder?" with reference to novelist Juno Diaz, visiting professor Steven Winduo reads his poems in the Tokpisin Pidgin language, and Linguistics and Cognitive Science graduate student Ellen Lucast explores "What Do You Know? Theory of Mind in Communication." All welcome. Refreshments! Monday November 19, 2:30 pm, Lind Hall 207A.

English graduate students have organized a November 16-18 conference here about fantasy literature featuring keynote speakers Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series of graphic novels, and Jack Zipes, noted UM scholar of fairy tales and folklore. Other featured authors are Patrick Rothfuss, Pamela Dean, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, and many local fantasy writers including MFA alumna Haddayr Copley-Woods.

The oratorio To Be Certain of the Dawn, by composer Stephen Paulus and Department of English professor Michael Dennis Browne, is nearly sold out for its single performance at Orchestra Hall on Tuesday, February 12, with the Minnesota Orchestra. The orchestra has announced tickets for the dress rehearsal, at 10 am that day. The Minnesota Orchestra debuted the oratorio two years ago at the Basilica of St. Mary and will be recording it for Bis Records after the February performance. Music director and conductor Osmo Vanska talks about the work.

Congratulations to associate professor Andrew Scheil, who received a McKnight Presidential Fellowship. The Fellowship recognizes promising faculty who recently gained tenure and the rank of associate professor. The awards include three years of research support. Scheil is currently on sabbatical with a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

Professor Patricia Hampl marked the publication of her fifth memoir The Florist's Daughter at the Fitzgerald Theater on October 7; the event will be broadcast on MPR. Also on the 7th, the New York Times ran a rave review describing The Florist's Daughter as "Hampl’s finest, most powerful book yet."

Off the Shelf: A Book Discussion Series with English@Minnesota invites alumni to join University of Minnesota English professors in good conversation about books. We will be reading works from visiting writers, department faculty, and playwrights who are being produced on local stages; the monthly series features books by Paul Muldoon, Patricia Hampl, Charles Baxter, and Shakespeare, among others. The play readings will include a field trip to the theatrical production. All discussions free (theater tickets purchased by individual). Advanced registration necessary: see schedule and registration information.

The Department of English announces a new website feature, 5 Questions +, in which we offer up the requisite number of queries to an alumnus or alumna of our B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. programs. Our first Q & A spotlights former New Orleans resident Michael Tisserand (B.A. 1992), who recalled some advice from English professor Michael Dennis Browne while writing his second book, Sugarcane Academy. The memoir follows Tisserand's family and friends in the post-Katrina diaspora, as they set up a one-room schoolhouse for their evacuated children. Read more.

Edelstein-Keller visiting professor Charles Baxter has earned a mention in imdb.com: his 2000 novel Feast of Love has been made into a film which opened late September. In an interview with UMNnews, Baxter calls the Robert Benton-directed film starring Morgan Freeman " a reasonably good movie."

PhD candidate Mitchell P. Ogden is a recipient of the Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship in Film Study for 2007-8. As part of the fellowship, he is headed to Thailand at the end of September for three weeks with Hmong American filmmaker Moua Lee on Lee's film shoot there.

Julie Gard (MFA 2000) has published her first book with Finishing Line Press: Obscura: The Daguerreotype Series, a collection of prose poems. . . . The documentary film Arid Lands by Josh Wallaert (MFA 2007) has just been released on DVD by Bullfrog Films. . . . Pudding House Press published the chapbook Glances Back by MFA candidate Emily Bright. . . . A long poem by Shana Youngdahl (MFA 2006) entitled Donner: A Passing has been accepted for publication as a chapbook with Finishing Line Press. Congratulations to all!

Among the research and creative collaboration groups chosen by the Institute for Advanced Study for 2007-08 support was the Performance and Social Justice Collaborative, convened in part by English professor Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley. With choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, the group fashioned Pipaashaa, extreme thirst, an Ananya Dance Theatre performance debuting September 6-9 at the Southern Theater. Pipaashaa, extreme thirst, explores the impact of environmental degradation in the lives of communities of color across the divides of North and South.

MFA candidate Emily Freeman (fiction) and MFA alumna Margie Newman (nonfiction) have been selected for the 2007-2008 Loft Mentor Series. The Mentorships, presented by the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, offer advanced criticism and professional development opportunities to twelve writers a year. Three MFA alumni were finalists: Marge Barrett, Wendy Fernstrum, and Jennifer Johnson.

Danika Stegeman (BA 2005 summa cum laude) makes her publication debut with the poem "Here, 1,475' above the Ocean" in The Denver Quarterly (Vol. 41:4). Stegeman is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at George Mason University. . . . Sam Kean (BA 2002 summa cum laude) wrote "Uncommon Reading," about common-reading programs for freshmen, for the September Writer's Chronicle. Kean also contributes to The Chronicle of Philanthropy and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Edelstein-Keller Visiting Professor Charles Baxter will discuss his new book The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (Graywolf Press) at Magers & Quinn Bookstore, Thursday, August 9, at 7:30 pm. The book inaugurates a Graywolf series on the "art of writing" which Baxter will edit.

English/Theater student Colin Waitt performs in Bards, a Fringe Festival comedy presented August 3 through August 12 by Four Humors Theater. Bards follows spies Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare on a dangerous mission for the Queen. Four Humors Theater was founded by University of Minnesota students. All involved with the production are either past or current students. All performances are at the Southern Theatre on the West Bank.

Timothy Sweet (PhD 1988) was awarded the 2006 Richard Beale Davis Prize for his article "'What Concernment Hath America in These Things!' Local and Global in Samuel Sewall's Plum Island Passage." The Davis Prize honors the best article published in Early American Literature in a publishing year. Sweet is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of English at West Virginia University.

William Reichard (PhD 1997) reads from his latest poetry collection This Brightness (Mid-List Press) at 8 pm July 20 and 21 at Patrick's Cabaret. Reichard also joins Eireann Lorsung (MFA 2006) at BirchBark Books 7 pm July 26 for a reading. Lorsung's debut poetry collection music for landing planes by (Milkweed) was published this past spring.

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, an international organization with more than a thousand members, meets on the UMTC campus July 10-14. The SHARP conference is offering a selection of public events which do not require registration, from a Thursday talk by novelist and BirchBark Books owner Louise Erdrich to a Saturday panel on "Publishing Here and Now." See details at right or the full list of open admission events.

On Tuesday, July 10, Professor Thomas Augst will discuss Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States, an essay collection he co-edited which was just published by the University of Massachusetts Press. A reception and book signing will follow his talk; 3-5 pm at the central Minneapolis Public Library, 300 Nicollet Mall.

Professor Maria Damon will lead a discussion series entitled "Your Heart's Desire: Sex and Love in Jewish Literature" through July at the Highland Park Branch of the St. Paul Public Libraries. Damon, who won a 2006-07 Graduate and Professional Teaching Award, presents works by Philip Roth (July 3), Grace Paley (July 10), Shmuel Yosef Agnon (July 17), Abraham B. Yehoshua (July 24), and Rebecca Goldstein (July 31). To register contact Alayne Hopkins at (651) 366-6488 or alayne@thefriends.org.

Eric Dregni (MFA '07) will be reading and offering travel tips from his books Weird Minnesota and Midwest Marvels June 25 at the Brooklyn Park Library, June 27 at the Maple Grove Library, and July 9 at the Ridgedale Library, all at 7 pm. Interviewed by the Minnesota Daily about Weird Minnesota, Dregni noted, "We can't be proud of having the Colosseum or the Eiffel Tower, but we can be proud of a talking Paul Bunyan."

MFA candidate Emily August and 2001 MFA alumnus Michael Seward are among the readers at "OUT @ the Library," a special PRIDE event featuring "some of the finest GLBT writers in the Twin Cities." The reading, presented by the Carol Connolly GLBT Reading Series and part of a continuing library exhibit, will take place 7 pm Wednesday, June 27 at the Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall.

Laurie Lindeen (MFA ’04) celebrated the release of her debut memoir Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story June 16 at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Lindeen, whose book follows her from teen music fan to musician in the band Zuzu’s Petals, was interviewed by Current personality Mary Lucia. She also read from her book and performed with the reunited Zuzu’s Petals. Other musical guests included Lori Barbero (former Babe in Toyland), Mark Olson (former Jayhawk), and Paul Westerberg (former Replacement). The performance was aired on the Current (89.3 FM) Sunday June 24. Lindeen will read at the Edina Barnes & Noble July 10 at 7:30 pm.

Medievalist George Shuffleton visits the Department of English this fall semester from Carlton College, where he is assistant professor of English. Shuffleton will teach ENGL 8110-001 Popular Literature of Late Medieval England. He has a particular interest in Chaucer, Langland, and Gower, and his current research focuses on the relationship between miscellany manuscripts and Middle English poetry.

On Sunday June 3, the Washington (D.C.) Times raved about Eireann Lorsung's poetry collection Music for Landing Planes By, out this spring on Milkweed Editions. Wrote critic Michael Brendan Dougherty: "The lyrical nature of her composition and the surprises that hang at the end of her verses make this assortment of delights eminently re-readable." Lorsung is a 2006 MFA. . . . Steve Healey (PhD candidate) will read his poetry at Minneapolis' Opposable Thumbs Bookstore June 8 at 7:30 pm. Also in Minneapolis, Haddayr Copley-Woods (MFA 2000) will read her fiction at Dreamhaven Books June 28 at 6:30 pm.

The Fantasy Matters Conference, set for November 16-18 at the University of Minnesota, is looking for paper, panel, and author reading submissions by June 15. This conference takes the position that fantasy literature plays an important role not only in popular culture, but also in the realm of literature itself. Scholars of fantasy literature at any level (fan, undergraduate, graduate, or professional) are invited to submit abstract proposals of 250 words. Keynote speakers will be Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series of graphic novels, and University of Minnesota professor Jack Zipes, noted scholar of fairy tales and folklore. The Name of the Wind author Patrick Rothfuss will be a featured reader, among others.

The May session class ENGL3020 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes presents student research projects on the final day of class, Thursday, June 7, from 10 am to noon. Instructor Kate Hannah's undergraduates have been investigating topics in the Sherlock Holmes Collection at Andersen Library. Among their featured findings: "The Women of the Sherlock Holmes Canon," "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and His Reading Public," and "Sherlock Holmes and Forensic Science." Interested parties are welcome to attend. Room 120B, Andersen Library. Meanwhile the University of Minnesota Showboat Players present Sherlock's Last Case from June 15 to August 25; and the University co-sponsors the Sherlock Holmes convention Victorian Secrets and Edwardian Enigmas here July 6-8.

Associate professor Rebecca Krug has won the College of Liberal Arts Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Award for 2006-07. She joins six active English professors with this distinction. The award recognizes faculty "who inspire and care, who make themselves approachable, who show an interest in individual students' well-being and in programs for the benefit of students generally, who give of themselves generously in advising, counseling, and directing projects, and who create an active classroom atmosphere." Krug is a medievalist who this past year taught The Story of King Arthur and Women in the Middle Ages. Congratulations Professor Krug!

The Department of English is proud to host poet, scholar and teacher Steven Winduo in 2007-08. Winduo lectures in literature and language at the University of Papua New Guinea. He has published two poetry collections: Lomo'ha I am, in Spirit's Voice I Call (1991) and Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest (2000). Windou is the founding editor of Savanna Flames: A Papua New Guinea Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture. For fall, he will teach the undergraduate classes Analysis of the English Language and Literacy and American Cultural Diversity.

The Department of English undergraduate literary magazine Ivory Tower launched its 2007 issue with two readings at semester's end. The first, on April 27, brought a packed house to the Weisman Art Museum. After student contributors read, the Ivory Tower editors took the stage to announce the winning entries in each category. Becky Lang's "Cocoa Season" won for fiction; Luci Kandler's "History of a Lake at Night" won for creative nonfiction; Erica Niemiec's "Convergences and Crossings" won for poetry; and Angie Myhre's "Believer" won for art. Congratulations to the staff and all contributors!

The Department of English regularly offers courses in film studies. A website set up this spring by Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature for the first time rounds up current classes in cinema studies across the University. The website also profiles faculty with major research interests in film, including English professors Siobhan Craig, John Mowitt, Paula Rabinowitz, and Jani Scandura. The site lists University film collaboratives as well as online resources. This fall's English course offerings in cinema: Craig's The Western, Charles Sugnet's Fiction, Film, & Video from Emerging Nations and African Cinema, Jack Zipes' Fairy Tale Films and the Brothers Grimm and Transformations of the Fairy Tale, and Screenwriting.

Professor Matar, hired under the Presidential Initiative on Arts and Humanities, will call the Department of English home starting next fall. Matar's research and writing focus on 16th- and 17th-century interactions between Europe, especially England, and the world of Islam. He will be teaching the English graduate level course Britain & Islamic Mediterranean: 1588-1713, which will trace the intellectual and historical contacts between early modern England and the Muslim Mediterranean through drama, travel literature, captivity accounts and theological polemic. Among his numerous publications are Britain and Barbary: 1589-1689 (University Press of Florida, 2005) and Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia University Press, 1999). Matar received his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was Professor of English at the Florida Institute of Technology.

Congratulations to Graduate Research Partnership Program awardees and their faculty mentors: Lauren Curtright (John Wright); Mitch Ogden (Jigna Desai); Ethan Rutherford (Julie Schumacher); and Lisa Trochmann (Paula Rabinowitz). . . . Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships were granted to Becky Peterson, Stoyan Tchaprazov, Elizabeth Weixel, and Maria Zavialova. . . . This year's Charles Christensen Library Acquisition Prize went to Lindsay Craig and Lucia Pawlowski. . . . Congratulations also to Arlene Kim and Emily Bright, recipients of the Academy of American Poets' James Wright Prize for Poetry.

Two English majors were selected for the 2007-08 Selmer Birkelo Scholarships, which honor 14 high achieving students in the College of Liberal Arts: Libby Issendorf, who is double majoring in English and Journalism, and Amanda Steepleton. Congratulations also to our other 2007-08 English scholarship and award winners.

Professor Julie Schumacher won a Minnesota Book Award for her young adult novel The Book of One Hundred Truths (Delacorte). Awards were announced May 5 in St. Paul. Other Creative Writing professors who have been honored with a Minnesota Book Award include Michael Dennis Browne (twice), Ray Gonzalez, Patricia Hampl, and David Treuer.

Regents professor Patricia Hampl was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hampl is one of only two new fellows elected for accomplishment in the writing of literature.

Poet and fiction writer Cheri Johnson (MFA 2005) was one of four Minnesotans granted $25,000 McKnight Artist Fellowships through the Loft Awards in Creative Prose. Novelist Jane Hamilton judged submissions for the 2007 fellowships. Johnson also has been awarded a seven-month fellowship (in fiction) to the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown for 2007-2008.

Emily August won a Steven J. Schochet GLBTA Studies Award for Excellence in Creativity and Scholarship, which is administered by the GLBTA Programs Office. August will be recognized at the Lavender Graduation Ceremony Thursday, May 3rd.

Assistant professor Tony C. Brown and associate professor Andrew Scheil received National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships for the academic year 2007-08. They also both received supplemental College of Liberal Arts Research grants.

Congratulations to the following graduate students for securing tenure-track academic positions: Rachel Mordecai, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Amherst, MA); Alex Mueller, SUNY-Plattsburgh (Plattsburgh, NY); Ariane Balizet, California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA); Karen Steigman, Otterbein College (Columbus, OH); and Marie-Therese Sulit, Mount Saint Mary College (Newburgh, NY). David Wehner, who has been a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Center for Teaching and Learning here at the U, has accepted a tenure-track position at Mount Saint Mary's University (Emmitsburg, Maryland). In addition, Robert Stark will be visiting assistant professor at Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI).

Congratulations to Professor Shirley Garner upon being awarded the Mullen/Spector/Truax Women's Leadership Award for this year. Currently associate dean of the Graduate School, Professor Garner served from 1996 to 2000 as chair of the Department of English, which she joined in 1970.

Dislocate, the literary journal produced by English graduate students, releases its third issue with a party 7:30 pm Tuesday April 17 at the Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. NE, in Minneapolis. Local poets Jon Vick, Matt Rasmussen, and Portland writer Erin Ergenbright will read. The Ivory Tower, the undergraduate literary magazine and English course, hosts a launch party for their 2007 issue at 6 pm on April 27 at the Weisman Art Museum, Dolly Fiterman Riverview Gallery. Creative Writing chair and professor Julie Schumacher will speak, along with journal contributors and editors.

Kelly Hulander read her paper "'[Her] Kindness...Was Inexhaustible': Condescension and Entitlement vs. Cross-Class Friendship in British New Woman and Socialist Fiction" at the 2007 British Women Writers Conference, University of Kentucky in Lexington, this April. Chris Kamerbeek's article "Parks and Wreck: Anxiety and Amusement at Turn-of-the-Century Coney Island," will appear in the forthcoming Summer 2007 issue of Popular Culture Review. Gregg Murray presented: “‘(The Joking Voice, a Gesture I Love)’: Familiarizing Discourse in Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Manuelzinho’� at the PCA/ACA Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, April 2007; “I Say No More and Walk Barefoot: Feet in Jean Genet’s Le Miracle de la rose� at the Graduate Symposium in Romance Languages at the University of Minnesota, March 2007; and “Historicizing Elizabeth Bishop’s Hierarchical Distance in Brazil� at the Red River Graduate Student Conference in Fargo, North Dakota, February 2007.

This week the Creative Writing Program celebrates its 10th year of awarding the Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. For information about this week's "Writers at Work" afternoon panels and the April 13 gala, see "Events".

Josh Wallaert will be on hand for the Minnesota premiere of his film Arid Lands 7 pm Thursday April 12 at the Bell Auditorium. Arid Lands is a prize-winning documentary that focuses on land use around the Hanford nuclear site in southeastern Washington state. Wallaert, who co-directed, will discuss the film with University of Minnesota geographers Bruce Braun and George Henderson.

Associate Professor of English David Treuer received a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship for work on a non-fiction book about contemporary reservation (American Indian) life. This year Treuer also received a McKnight Presidential Fellow Award from the University and an NEH Fellowship to work on preserving the Ojibwe language. Last August he published the novel The Translation of Dr. Apelles and the collection of critical essays Native American Fiction: A User's Manual.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced that Charles Baxter received the Award of Merit for the Short Story, which grants $10,000 and a medal to an outstanding short story writer. The academic year 2007-08 will be Baxter's third as Edelstein-Keller Visiting Professor in the Creative Writing Program of the Department of English; the novelist and short story writer is the author of The Feast of Love.

Professor Maria Damon received the University of Minnesota Distinguished Teaching Award for Outstanding Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education for 2006-07. This award recognizes faculty members for excellence in instruction, instructional program development, intellectual distinction, advising and mentoring, and involvement of students in research, scholarship, and professional development. English professors Madelon Sprengnether, John Mowitt, Edward M. Griffin, and Tom Clayton are previous winners of this award.

Michael Kleine (PhD 1983) is publishing Searching For Latini (Parlor Press), a book about Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante. A composition scholar and a poet, Kleine "argues that Latini should be rescued from obscurity, not only because of the literary status of his student but also because of Latini’s promotion of Ciceronian rhetoric during the dawn of the Renaissance and the relevance of his work to contemporary teachers of writing." Kleine is a professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Ellen Messer-Davidow was selected to be a Residential Fellow at the University of Minnesota Institute for Advanced Study for the fall of 2007. . . . Katherine Scheil will be a McKnight Summer Fellow for the summer of 2007. . . . Natasha Tinsley received funding for one year from the President's Faculty Multicultural Research Award for her proposal "Desiring the Blue Lagoon: Sea Crossings and Fluid Identities in Caribbean Literature."

MFA candidate Emily Bright's first chapbook of poetry will be published by Pudding House Press in summer 2007. Bright plans to graduate in 2008.

Shaye Areheart Books, a division of Random House, will publish MFA alumna Amy Shearn's debut novel, How Far is the Ocean from Here? in summer 2008. Shearn received her MFA in 2005.

The Department of English welcomes back to the University of Minnesota Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah, who was a visiting writer in 1988, and Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich, who delivered the Joseph Warren Beach Lecture in Literature here in 1996. Farah and Erdrich met recently at a conference and discovered they had much to discuss, a conversation they will continue with this unique dialogue and reading, 3:30 pm Sunday March 4 at Cowles Auditorium. Farah will be interviewed on National Public Radio's Morning Edition February 23.

Alumna Lauren Fox published her first novel Still Life With Husband on Knopf this month, and on February 16, the New York Times gave it a thumbs up. Reviewer Michiko Kakutani names Fox "a delightful new voice in American fiction," describes her as a blend of Lorrie Moore and Roz Chast, and continues: "Ms. Fox, who earned an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1998, has an uncanny ability to capture the absurdities of her heroine’s pastel-colored life in Milwaukee, and to map the darker emotional landscape she inhabits."

Congratulations to Associate Professor Katherine Scheil upon being awarded a 2007 BSA (Bibliographical Society of America) Fellowship, "which supports bibliographical inquiry as well as research in the history of the book trades and in publishing history." As professor Scheil outlined in the February 2 ENow! program on archives, she is currently researching the history of reading Shakespeare, especially within women's reading groups in the 18th and 19th centuries.

MFA candidate Josh Wallaert and his co-director Grant Aaker received the "People's Choice" award for their documentary Arid Lands at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, CA. The film looks at people who live near the Hanford nuclear site in southeastern Washington and follows the changes to the desert landscape brought about by nuclear industry, housing development, and irrigated agriculture. The documentary, which premiered at Wild and Scenic, has been invited to the Eckerd College Environmental Film Festival in St. Petersburg, FL, in February, and will be screening in April in the Bell Auditorium's "Science on Screen" series.

Laura Flynn (MFA '06) will publish her memoir Swallow the Ocean with Counterpoint Books in early 2008. Flynn was featured in the summer 2006 issue of English at Minnesota as the first Scribe for Human Rights. While she held the Scribe Fellowship, Flynn worked with the Human Rights Program at the U to research and write a story about immigrants detained in Midwest jails on immigration charges. Her memoir, based on her MFA thesis, focuses on Flynn's experience growing up in San Francisco with a mother suffering mental illness.

English Emeritus professor Archibald Leyasmeyer serves as a primary source for a new Minnesota History article about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson (Fences, The Piano Lesson) and his relationship with the Minneapolis Playwrights' Center. Leyasmeyer was board president when Wilson, who had moved to St. Paul from Pittsburgh, received a Jerome fellowship at the Playwrights' Center for 1980-81; in the article, Leyasmeyer recalls this choice as "one of the greatest decisions of my life." That year, Wilson wrote Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

On January 26, English professor Siobhan Craig will moderate as pioneering American avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger introduces and discusses his original films Fireworks, Rabbit’s Moon, Scorpio Rising, and Kustom Kar Kommandos. These are new 35mm blow-up restorations recently released by the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Professor Craig is currently teaching Anger in her undergraduate class The Split and Sutured Self, which focuses on subjectivity in literary, cinematic and theoretical texts from the 20th and 21st centuries. She and Anger will speak 7:30 pm at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis.

Erin Altemus, MFA '07, traveled to Northern Ontario last summer to meet members of First Nation communities and record their stories. As she writes in M, Altemus canoed the lakes and rivers of the boreal forest, visiting communities along the way. Her trip was made possible by a Judd Fellowship.

Fiction writer, critic, and social activist Tillie Olsen died January 1, 2007. Olsen visited the Department of English to read from her short story collection Tell Me a Riddle. Another visit came in 1986 on the 100th anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death. Invited by Professor Toni McNaron, Olsen spoke to undergraduates at length about Dickinson. "She was fascinating because she had read the poems so carefully and knew them so intimately," remembers McNaron. "She also talked about the value and distinct privilege of having solitude, since matters of class were always front and center with Olsen." Olsen's 95th birthday would have been January 14th. Her family has requested that everyone touched by her work "gather with friends in their homes or libraries or bookstores and read her work aloud."

The following students won CLA grants to support the research and professionalization of graduate students in English: Mitchell Odgen, Becky Petersen, Liz Hutter, Elizabeth Weixel, Sara Berrey, Stoyan Vassilev Tchaprazov, Karen Steigman, Nicholas Hengen, and Adam Schrag.

The VG/Voices from the Gaps website, housed in the Department of English, was named “Best Educational Resource on the Web� this fall by StudySphere. VG is an international website focused on women writers and artists of color. Its trans-national academic community includes students, teachers, artists, and scholars.

The new memoir by Regents Professor Patricia Hampl was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2006. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime (Harcourt) is, according to Kathyrn Harrison in her New York Times review, "a paean to the act of seeing, celebrating our capacity to be transformed by the truths art holds, recognizing them as . . . holy."

Lightsey Darst (MFA 2003) and Karen Rigby (MFA 2005) received $20,000 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry.