DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
Graduate Newsletter
Contents
2 Quick Notes
3 Events
4 Student Life
5 Gaillard Interview
6 Walker Interview
8 Faculty
11 Upcoming Courses
Contact Information
English Department
Humanities 240
251-460-6146
www.south
alabama.edu/english
Graduate Coordinator:
Dr. Ellen Burton Harrington
251-460-7326
eharrington@south
alabama.edu
Newsletter Editor:
Rachael Fowler
raf802@jagmail.south
alabama.edu
Gaillard Interview
See page 5 for an interview
with USA’s writer-inresidence, Frye Gaillard. His
book, Journey to the
Wilderness, will be out in
November. He will also be
giving this year’s Hamner
Lecture on November 5.
Walker Interview
See page 6 for an interview
with Dr. Sue Walker. After
many year’s of teaching at
South Alabama, she will be
retiring in spring of 2015. Her
most recent publication is The
Ecological Poetics of James
Dickey.
The M.A. Program
With concentrations in both creative writing and in literature,
the Master of Arts degree program in English meets the needs of
students pursuing the M.A. degree to further their career and creative
goals, as well as those of students pursuing the M.A. degree as they
work toward entering a Ph.D. program and a career in university
teaching. The M.A. degree serves such career tracks as junior college
or secondary-school teaching and writing or editing in the business or
corporate community. Creative writers find the degree meaningful in
careers both in and out of the academic community.
M.A. ENGLISH
IN
CREATIVE WRITING
LITERATURE
University of South Alabama
Master of Arts in English
New Additions
The Department of English is proud to
announce incoming graduate students
for the 2014-2015 academic year:
Stephanie Balmori, Aryn Bradley,
Leah Evans, Rachael Fowler, Tabitha
Lett, Ava Tindol Long, Julia Lymon,
Don Mutchler, Matthew Poirier,
Cynthia Rush.
University of South Alabama 2014-2015
Recent Graduates
The faculty and staff
would also like to
congratulate the most
recent graduates of the
M.A. program:
Kennon Barton, Meg
Lundberg, Rachael
McCarty, Michael Odom.
1
Quick Notes
Oracle 2014
The 2014 issue of Oracle Fine Arts Review is
now available on campus. It can also be
downloaded as a pdf online at
www.southalabama.edu/oracle.
Job Openings
The department is hard at work trying to
fill two open positions: Director of
Creative Writing and Director of
Composition. The two professors chosen
for the positions will begin teaching in
August of 2015.
Sabbatical Leaves
Two members of the graduate faculty are
currently on sabbatical. Carolyn Haines
is completing multiple novels. Justin St.
Clair is working on a cultural history of
soundtracked literature. Both professors
will return in August of 2015.
Hollywood News
Laura Cayouette, a 1988 graduate of the
M.A. program, was awarded the 2014
South Alabama Distinguished Alumni
Award. She has appeared in Tremé,
Django Unchained, and True Detective.
Congratulations to Laura!
Online Upgrades
The website for the Department of English has recently been updated. All information and
images have been changed to create a much more accessible site. Check it out for yourself.
http://www.southalabama.edu/colleges/artsandsci/english/
There is also a Facebook page associated with the department’s creative writing concentration.
It’s a great resource for students and faculty to come together as a community. Check it
frequently for upcoming events, quick news, and interesting information about the publishing
business.
https://www.facebook.com/usafictionwriting
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Events
Lectures
Conferences
The department offers funding for
students presenting at conferences.
Some regional conferences are listed
below.
The University of South Carolina
will host a conference this spring with
the theme of “Intellectual Freedom.”
The deadline for paper proposals is
November 27, 2014.
The FSU Graduate Student
Association will be hosting the 7th
annual Southeast Regional Graduate
Conference under the theme "Ugly
Truths and Glorious Lies: The Politics
of Memory and Culture." Submissions
are due January 2, 2015.
Sigma Tau Delta English Honor
Society will hold its annual
international convention in
Albuquerque, New Mexico on March
18-21. The theme this year is
“Borderlands and Enchantments.”
During Mardi Gras week of each year,
Louisiana State University English
Graduate Association hosts the Mardi
Gras Graduate English Conference
in Language and Literature.
The annual University of Florida
English Graduate Organization
Interdisciplinary Conference takes
place in Gainesville each fall.
Wednesday, November 5,
2014 - 4:00PM
Frye Gaillard will deliver
the twelfth Eugenie L.
Hamner Lecture for the
Graduate Program in
English on Wednesday,
November 5, 2014. Prof.
Gaillard’s talk, "Journey to
the Wilderness," will be
held at 4 p.m. in the Marx
Library Auditorium.
Thursday, October 30,
2014 - 4:00PM / 7:00PM
Award-winning Nashville songwriter Anne E. DeChant
will visit USA on Thursday, Oct. 30, appearing at two
events sponsored by the Common Read and Gender
Studies programs. At 4 p.m., DeChant will join USA
Writer-in-Residence Frye Gaillard at the Marx Library
Auditorium for a discussion of "Story-Telling Through
Song." The discussion will followed by a 7 p.m. acoustic
concert at Satori Coffee House. Both events are free.
Center for War and Memory
The Center for War and Memory focuses on the study of
how communities, institutions, and nations make sense of
past military events through public monuments,
remembrance rituals, re-enactments, works of literature,
movies, popular history programming, and the internet.
Besides sponsoring lectures and conferences, the center
eventually plans to publish a peer-reviewed journal. Dr.
Trout of the English department serves as director for the
center. Past lectures include "The First World War: 100
Years After" and “Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War.”
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Student Life
IMC
Founded in 2009,
the Independent
Music Collective
(IMC) is a student
organization at the
University of South
Alabama that works
together with USA
faculty, staff,
alumni, and
members of the
broader community
in an effort to enrich
Mobile's music
scene. On Saturday,
October 18th, the IMC brought musician Charlie
Parr to Satori as part of a concert series.
Assistantships
The department offers funding in the
form of Graduate Assistantships and
Teaching Assistantships. GA recipients
work as a writing consultants at he
Writing Center and are assigned a
professor to assist in research. TA
recipients gain great teaching experience
by instructing their own EH 101 classes.
Information on both of these
assistantships can be found on the
website. Applications are due in the
spring.
Current GAs:
Aryn Bradley, Rachael Fowler, Matthew
Poirier, Jennifer Shelby
Current TAs:
David Collins, Leah Evans, Bailey
Hammond, Katie Pope, Tyler Williams
Awards
Many awards are offered every
spring for graduate students in both
literature and creative writing. A
list of these awards is available on
the department website. To apply,
check the site for deadlines during
the spring semester.
Oracle 2015
Oracle is a fine arts
review produced
annually by students in
the English and Visual
Arts Departments. It
features fiction,
nonfiction, poetry, and
art.
Congratulations to the 2013-2014
winners: Meghan Brewer (Stokes
Creative Nonfiction), Bailey
Hammond (Lloyd Dendinger
Memorial, English Department
Essay Contest, Shelley Memorial),
Dana Johnson (English Department
Endowed), Rachel McMullen
(Stokes Poetry), and Katie Pope
(Dr. Patricia Stephens Memorial,
Stokes Fiction).
The staff for the 2015 issue has been announced.
Editor in Chief: Karie Fugett
Consulting Editor: Rachael Fowler
Art Director: Kevin Brouillette
Art Curator: Christine Rogalin
Assistant to Art Curator: Anthony Anderson
Fiction Editor: Rachael Fowler
Assistant to Fiction Editor: James Craig
Nonfiction Editor: Kiran Awan
Poetry Editor: Rachel McMullen
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Frye Gaillard
USA Writer-in-Residence,
Author of Journey to the Wilderness: War,
Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War
Letters
South Alabama’s writer-in-residence, Frye Gaillard, began his academic career as a history major at
Vanderbilt during the 1960s. He worked for the student newspaper and an organization that bourght
national speakers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy to campus. His exposure
to history, journalism, and impactful events shaped his career as a writer. He then worked as journalist
for multiple magazines and before writing books and eventually landing at the Department of English
at South Alabama.
Will you give a brief outline of your career starting with undergraduate education?
Gaillard: I worked for the Associated Press, and later the Charlotte Observer, and free-lanced
for a variety of national magazines before turning my attention to writing books. I discovered
that many of the great events of our times were taking place in the South, and I began to see
these great issues of civil rights and social justice as reflections of what William Faulkner
called "the human heart in conflict with itself." We were asking ourselves, in effect, who are
we and what do we believe in? Some of the answers to those questions came to us through the
lens of politics, not only electoral politics, but the great social movements of the late 20th
century, from civil rights to equality for women. But there were cultural windows on our
hearts as well, and so I began to write about them also, with books about music, books about
books, books about sports. My writing heroes were authors of fiction and non-fiction who
seemed not only to tell a good story, but to put a human face on the truth. That's what I've
tried to do as well.
How long have you been writer-in-residence? And what exactly does the position entail?
Gaillard: I began as writer in residence in 2005, and my job description for the first eight
years was to teach one course a semester, to work with individual students with their writing,
sometimes by serving on thesis committees, to do public lectures and programs both on
campus and off, and to do my own writing. The course I taught was focused on the history and
literature of the civil rights movement, usually in the fall, and in the spring I taught a course
called “Writing the South,” in which we explored the interplay of southern history and
literature. Right now, I'm not teaching any courses, though I occasionally do independent
studies with individual students. My other duties remain the same.
Continued on page 7.
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Sue Walker
Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing,
Alabama State Poet Laureate Emeritus,
Author of The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey
Dr. Sue Brannan Walker is currently the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing in the University
of South Alabama’s Department of English. Aside from teaching, she also writes and publishes poetry, plays,
essays, and scholarly papers. Some of her work includes Traveling My Shadow, Shorings, The Appearance of
Green, Blood Must Bear Your Name, It’s Good Weather for Fudge: Conversing with Carson McCullers, and
In the Realm of Rivers: Alabama’s Mobile-Tensaw Delta. She also runs a small press called Negative
Capability.
How did you enter the world of academia?
Walker: My undergraduate degree was a BS from the University
of Alabama. From Tuscaloosa, it was on to Tulane University
where I earned an M.Ed, and MA, and a Ph.D. I wrote my
dissertation on “Love, Music, and Time in the Fiction of Carson
McCullers.”
When did you first start working at South?
Walker: 1980.
What is your favorite course that you taught while at South?
Walker: It’s impossible to choose a favorite. There are memories
and delights associated with all of my classes. A few highlights
include a service-learning Poetry Writing course which included an
additional volunteer component teaching writing to the homeless at
15 Place in Mobile. Another was teaching Literature and the
Environment and visiting Blakeley State Park. Director Jo Ann
Flirt provided a picnic and a boat trip on the Tensaw River. This
semester, my creative nonfiction students are writing Literary
Tourism articles and participating in the Southeastern Literary Tourism Initiative. Several students
have been published on the SELTI website.
What had been your favorite part of teaching at South?
Walker: I love seeing how innovative and creative students can be. It’s always a thrill when they get
published.
Continued on page 7.
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Interviews Continued
Continued from page 5.
Continued from page 6.
Do you have any publications soon to be
released?
Gaillard: I have a book coming out in December
called Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory,
and a Southern Family's Civil War Letters. I have
also completed a children's novel that will be
coming out in 2015, and there will also be a new
edition next year of a book called The Quilt and
the Poetry of Alabama Music, which I co-authored
with songwriter Kathryn Scheldt. I have been
doing some programs on the poetry of songwriting
with some friends of mine who are Nashville
songwriters, and have even collaborated with them
on the lyrics to some songs. That's new for me and
a lot of fun. And then finally, I'm beginning work
on a book on the 1960s, which I believe was a
crucial decade in the recent history of our country.
What is your favorite part of working as writerin-residence?
Gaillard: I love working with students. I think
this is a good university. Recently, I was on a panel
sponsored by the History Club, a student
organization, and we talked about recent events in
Ferguson, MO from the perspective of civil rights
history in America. By my count, there were 80 or
so students and faculty members who turned out
for this on a Monday night, and the quality of
questions and audience discussion was nothing
short of superb. It was exactly the kind of
conversation we need more often in this country,
and certainly the kind that ought to happen at a
university. I was really proud of what I saw and
heard and learned that night.
What are you plans after retiring from
South?
Walker: I will be focusing on Negative
Capability Press, on editing and
publishing, and also on teaching online
poetry courses.
How is Negative Capability Press
going?
Walker: It is flourishing. In the last six
months or so, we’ve published writers
from New York, California, Georgia,
Mississippi,and North Carolina as well as
Alabama. Check out
negativecapabilitypress.org.
Are there any books you are currently
working on or expecting in print soon?
Walker: I have just finished and am
revising an abecedarian (think alphabet)
collection of prose poems and lyric
essays that constitute a series of
panoramic persona envisioning of
women in which the narrator tries on
various identities—from Abigail Adams
to Ziyi Zhang. The collection includes
Olive Oyl, Lois Lane, Margaret Mead,
and Susan Sontag.
* In the spring, there will be a ceremony
honoring Dr. Walker for her great
contributions to the department and the
university. All students, faculty, staff,
friends, and family are welcome to
attend. For specifics on date, location,
and time, please check the English
department website.
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Faculty
Nicole Amare
Nicole Amare will present a paper in October at the Southern Popular Culture Association
Conference on reconciliation and harmony as plot devices in Mormon authors' fiction. Also in
October, she will present at the International Writing Centers Association Conference on the
problems of teaching grammatical parallelism to student writers. She is currently drafting a book
with co-author Alan Manning called Simplified Syntax.
Larry Beason
Larry Beason’s areas of specialization include composition, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, and science
fiction. In spring 2014, he presented a paper entitled “Beyond ‘Brrrains’: Zombies and Their
Discourse Communities in Warm Bodies” at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the
Arts. He is completing a new edition of his textbook (Commonsense Guide to Grammar and Usage)
to be published early 2015.
Pat Cesarini
Pat Cesarini teaches courses in American literature before 1900, literary theory, and composition.
He has published articles on the literature of colonial New England, and he has also delivered papers
on writers of the American Renaissance. Current projects include a study of Herman Melville and
the 'maritime georgic,' Henry James and pedagogy, and the poetry of war in the U.S. In the spring
he will teach a graduate seminar, EH 501-Introduction to Critical Theory.
Robert Coleman
Robert Coleman serves as the Assistant Dean of Arts & Sciences. His areas of specialties include
digital humanities, U.S. literatures, literary aesthetics, and rhetorics.
Annmarie Guzy
Annmarie Guzy specializes in composition pedagogy, professional communication, honors
education, and gender studies. Her article “The Confidence Game in Honors Admissions and
Retention” was published in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate
Honors Council. She also presented the paper “Constructing an Honors Composition Course” to
Support a Research-based Honors Curriculum at the National Collegiate Honors Council, New
Orleans, LA, November 6-10, 2013.
Carolyn Haines
Carolyn Haines has three recent publications: The Seeker, a literary horror novel; Pirate Bones, the
14th book in the Sarah Booth Delaney Mississippi Mystery series; and Bone-A-Fied Delicious, a
cookbook based around her Bones series. She is an assistant professor and the fiction coordinator for
the English creative writing program and teaches fiction workshops each fall and spring. She is
currently on sabbatical for the 2014-2015 academic year. She will return in August of 2015.
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Faculty
John Halbrooks
John Halbrooks works primarily with Medieval and Renaissance literature. He recently delivered a
paper on the poetry of Michael Drayton at the American Comparative Literature Association meeting in
New York. This paper was excerpted from his current book project, which proposes that Renaissance
poets, especially Sidney and Spenser, invented the anachronism of the heroic Middle Ages.
Ellen Burton Harrington
Ellen Burton Harrington specializes in Victorian literature, the short story and novel genres. Her
article, “‘Dead Men Have No Children’ in Conrad’s ‘The Idiots’ and ‘Amy Foster’” was published in
Conradiana last winter. In August, she presented “"Gender, Solidarity, and the Case of Mrs. Schomberg
in Conrad's Victory" at the Joseph Conrad Society of America meeting in Vancouver, and she serves as
Book Review Editor for the journal Conradiana. She is working on a book project considering Joseph
Conrad's appropriation of popular representations of women in his late novels, as well as an article on
gender in late nineteenth-century detective fiction.
Richard Hillyer
Richard Hillyer mainly teaches Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare’s plays, but has an
interest in English-language poetry of all periods, as well as prosody (the theory and practice of
versification, whatever kind). His most recent publication was his third book, Divided between
Carelessness and Care: A Cultural History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His current project
is a book-in-progress on poetry-science relations from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, under
the working title Descartes’s Dagger: Poetry and Science as Mortal Enemies.
Cristopher Hollingsworth
Cristopher Hollingsworth delivered his most recent conference paper, “Popular Metafiction and Mock
Epic: Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and the Experience of Modern War” at the 2014 PCAS/ACAS
conference. His research into the rhetoric and poetics of excess—an offshoot of his investigation of the
structure of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books—continues, recently focusing on the catalog, or list, especially
its apparent facticity and pronounced capacity to organize time. Students taking Cristopher’s graduate
courses in Romanticism and Neo-romanticism can anticipate exploring the relationship between excess
(rhetorical and experiential) and authenticity.
Kern Jackson
Kern Jackson is the director of the African-American Studies Program. He specializes in AfricanAmerican and Southeastern United States folklore and oral narrative. He presented a paper at the
Annual 2013 American Folklore Society Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, entitled "The Spook
Who Sat by the Door: A Performative Interpretation of the Folkloric 04-10 Appropriation of Black
Subjects."
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Faculty
Becky McLaughlin
After many years of being stalled, Becky McLaughlin has returned to her Chaucer book, which now has a new
working title: “Wild” Analysis and the Symptomatic Storyteller: Lacan Avec Chaucer Avec (the) Moi. What broke
the paralysis was her recent publication of “Chaucer’s Cut” in the MLA’s new edition of Approaches to Teaching
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as well as an article on pedagogy and psychoanalysis accepted for publication in
Knowledge Cultures and forthcoming in November. “Wild” Analysis and the Symptomatic Storyteller brings
together the autobiographical, clinical, pedagogical, and scholarly, and thus the form this book takes is perhaps as
odd as its content: four autobiographical “shadow” chapters speak to or against four “central” chapters, creating
both a dialogue and an interruption not unlike that between unconscious and conscious chains of discourse. The
shadow chapter McLaughlin is currently writing, “Disgust and its (Dis)Contents,” follows “The Reeve’s Paranoid
Eye, or the Dramatics of ‘Bleared’ Sight,” published in ANaMORPHOSIS (2002). While the central chapter
focuses on the eye and the Reeve’s paranoid response to the Miller’s tale, the shadow chapter focuses on the
“nether eye,” Absolon’s hysterical response to the kiss, and the fart as pedagogical tool.
Linda Busby Parker
Linda Busby Parker’s press, Excalibur Press, just released a young adult novel on which she served as publisher
and editor—Isabella’s Libretto by Kim Cross Teter. In July, she presented two lectures fro the Alabama Writers’
Conclave: “Literary, Genre, or Experimental: Envisioning Your Work,” and “Four Building Blocks of Fiction:
Every Writer has Only Four.” She also served as the 2014 contest chair for the Alabama Writers’ Conclave writing
competition. She is working on final edits to her commercial novel, Oliver’s Song.
Chris Raczkowski
Chris Raczkowski's scholarship focuses on Anglo-American modernism, modernity and the modernist novel more
precisely. His most recent publication "Chester Himes, Franz Fanon and the Literary Decolonization of Harlem"
was published in LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory (Spring 2012), and his current work is a book-length
manuscript titled "Criminal Modernism" that investigates the historical, aesthetic and rhetorical importance of
crime to American modernism. He was awarded a sabbatical from the College of Arts and Sciences for the Spring
of 2014 to complete this project.
Justin St. Clair
Justin St. Clair teaches courses in postmodern and contemporary fiction and much of his research occurs at the
intersection of contemporary fiction and media studies. His current project is a cultural history of soundtracked
literature, tentatively titled Musical Transmedia: Soundtracked Fiction from Bubble Books to Booktrack. He is on
sabbatical this year.
Steven Trout
Steven Trout recently wrapped up two projects—a collection of essays on Ernest Hemingway’s early life called War
+Ink and an anthology of American World War I short stories. He also completed two articles on World War I
remembrance. In addition, he co-edited a recent issue of The Willa Cather Newsletter and Review. He serves as the
Chair of the Department of English.
Sue Brannan Walker
Sue Walker delivered a paper on James Dickey’s Puella at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on November 8-10, 2013. She is currently working on an abecedarian poetic book
of prose poems and lyric essays that is part memoir, part history, part cultural study in which the narrator explores
issues of identity and tries on various personas. Her book, The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey was published in
July 2013 by Mellen Press and awarded The Adele Mellen Prize for its distinguished contribution to scholarship.
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Upcoming Courses
Introduction to Critical Theory/EH 501|Pat Cesarini
For absolute beginners there will be a true introduction (what IS theory?), to be
followed by a unit that surveys several post-WWII theoretical movements, and a unit
focusing on Native American literature and theory: e.g., theories of race and ethnicity,
of colonialism and postcoloniality, and of the non- or anti-Western traditions.
Studies in Chaucer/EH 513|John Halbrooks
Chaucer is at the same time the most welcoming and the most unknowable of poets.
His personable narrative voice and his self-deprecating poetic personality seem so
simple, and yet they mask dazzling complexity, poetic subtlety, and political
ambivalence. He challenges us to imagine human discourse as endlessly dialogic,
even as he accepts as the ultimate truth a God that lies beyond the capacities of
language. In other words, Chaucer's apparent ambiguity does not imply a categorical
rejection of truth itself. It does suggest, on the other hand, as Chaucer's contemporary
William Langland expresses in a different way, that truth lies in the very struggle to find
it in the complexities of the world. And Chaucer engages with this struggle through
poetry and narrative rather than through a systematic attempt to resolve what is, in this
world at least, not resolvable. Students will engage with Chaucer's constant reinvention
of himself and his restless poetic experimentation through our study of the various
iterations of his narrative voice. Students will begin by getting acquainted with
Chaucer's Middle English through readings of The Book of the Duchess and The
General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Then the class will proceed to the rest of
the corpus, including the Tales, The House of Fame, and Troilus and Criseyde, as well
as reception history.
Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Literature/EH 525|Richard Hillyer
This course will be organized under some such theme as “Sex and Science in
Early Modern England.” Assigned readings will probably include biographies of
scientists and others by the pioneering antiquarian John Aubrey, extracts from the
diary of Samuel Pepys, some of the poetry by John Wilmot (second Earl of
Rochester), Jonathan Swift’s satire Gulliver’s Travels, and James Thomson’s
collection of poems entitled The Seasons.
University of South Alabama 2014-2015
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Upcoming Courses
Victorian and Edwardian Prose/EH 538|Ellen Burton Harrington
This class will consider a variety of novels and short stories, both popular and literary,
that represent some of the significant political, social, racial, national, and gender
undercurrents of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, along with historical and critical
work that contextualizes it. Students will begin with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist
(1838), considering the novel’s classic portrayal of the orphan hero grappling with
issues like class and crime. Students will then move to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering
Heights (1847), reading the novel as a threshold text between the Romantic and the
Victorian periods, and then students will examine George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss
(1860) through its presentation of childhood, eduction and Victorian womanhood. Next,
students will read Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) and consider class, crime, the
critique of empire, and developing genres of popular fiction. Students will read
Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and consider
crime and the city, developing theories of the mind, manhood, and the implications of
Darwin. Students will move to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) to
examine the tragic limitations of Tess’s class and gender positioning. Joseph Conrad’s
Edwardian novel The Secret Agent (1906) is another threshold text, treating topical
issues like anarchism and women’s rights in a novel that crosses genres, merging the
political novel with the domestic novel and the detective novel.
Studies in Genre/EH 577|Sue Walker
This “Studies in Genre” class will serve as the creative writing course for this semester. Focusing
on fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, students will test the boundaries of hybrid forms in
creative writing. Student will study the experimental nature of blended genres to produce
original works worthy of publication and awards.
Grad Fiction Writing I and II/EH 583|Linda Busby Parker
This course is an in-depth study of the elements of fiction writing and a workshop for advanced
students. The course is taught as lecture, discussion, and workshop. There is a significant reading
and writing component with the goal of each student producing one or more pieces of high
quality writing (a short story or a novel chapter) that will serve as fulfillment for a senior writing
project or a graduate-level writing project. Some pieces may be ready for publication and/or
contests. Readings will include works from genre, commercial, literary, and young adult fiction,
as well as readings from selected books on craft. Students will actively participate in both
discussions and workshops. In addition, the current state of publishing will also be discussed—
agents, editors, conferences, residences, traditional publishing and new forms of publishing.
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