Misssissippi State University Department of English

Departmental News & Events

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Upcoming

Readings at MSU
Fall 2008
All events are free and open to the public

 

 
     

 

Recent

 
Nov. 6 Kendall Dunkelberg, author of Time Capsules, read from his poetry in the Fowlkes Auditorium, Student Union. He appeared as part of the Robert Holland Readings Series.
November Josiah Meints received the 2008 Linda Brasher/Mary Ann Dazey Award for his essay "Twice Traumatized: Psychoanalysis and Object Realites in Dickens's A Christmas Carol."
November Elizabeth Teeple was awarded the 2008 Peyton Ward Williams, Jr. Distinguished Writing Award for her essay "The Miseducation of Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol." Joshua Parsons was awarded Honorable Mention for his essay "The Innate Knowledge of Good and Evil in Adam and Eve: Milton's Presentation of Knowledge and Hierarchy in Paradise Lost."
October Molly Hartzog and Caitlin Wolfe each were named recipients of the Nolan Book Award for fall 2008.
Oct. 21 Catherine Pierce read her poem, "Reading Faulkner at 17, You Foresee Your Reckoning," on slate.com http://www.slate.com/id/2065896/view/2116427/
Oct. 16 Gregory Semenza, Director of English Graduate Studies at the University of Connecticut, discussed graduate studies with our students. Dr. Semenza has won numerous awards for his teaching, including his university's AAUP Excellent Award for Teaching Promise and the 2005 University Teaching Fellows Award. His visit was sponsored by the English Department and the College of Arts & Sciences.
Oct. 10 Michael Kardos read one short story from his pending collection for the department's fall faculty symposium. The collection has received runner-up awards in numerous competitions.
Sept. 18 Charles M. Payne, Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, offered a lecture on "The Mississippi Freedom Schools and Their Long Legacy." This presentation was sponsored by the Mississippi State University African American Studies Program.
Sept. 18

Our first Fall Poetry readings were by authors:

Brian Barker -- his first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, Poetry, Agni, Quarterly West, American Book Review, The Writer's Chronicle, The Indiana Review, Blackbird, Sou'wester, and River Styx. He has earned degrees in Creative Writing and Literature from Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University, and the University of Houston. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Murray State University in Kentucky.

Nicky Beer has received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Discovery/The Nation award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2007, AGNI, Kenyon Review, The Nation, and Poetry.  She has earned a PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia, an MFA from the University of Houston, and a BA from Yale University.  She is a Visiting Poet at Murray State University.

Fall Greg Bentley will be on sabbatical for the fall term and busy reading Renaissance manuscripts by Beaumont, Drayton, Lodge, Marston, Fletcher, and others as he prepares a critical edition.
August Michael Kardos was selected runner-up in the Prairie Schooner Book Prize competition. He also has had an article, "In Defense of Starting Early," accepted for publication by The Writer's Chronicle.
July The Jabberwock Review announces the publication of issue 29.1, offering a mix of work by new and established writers. Contributers range (alphabetically) from Jeannette Allée to Charles Harper Webb. A beautiful little section of black and white photography augments the volume's selection of poetry and short fiction. This issue is Becky Hagenston's last in her very successful term as editor, as Michael Kardos will assume editorial duties this fall.
July Robert West has contacted with Norton Press to edit the Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons. Robert West
June Nancy Hargrove's new book, T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year, will be published by the University Press of Florida in 2009.
Nancy Hargrove
April Rich Raymond's "When Writing Professors Teach Literature," has been published in College Composition and Communication.
April Shirley Hanshaw's "Representations of the Two-Headed Doctor" will appear in the next volume of the Journal of the African American Literature Association.
April Becky Hagenston was awarded the Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award for 2008 for her story "The Secrets of Old-Time Science Experiments."
April 16 Rodney Jones read from his poetry as part of the Robert Holland Creative Writing series. Jones is the author of eight books of poetry: Salvation Blues: 100 Poems, 1985–2005 (2006), Kingdom of the Instant: Poems (2004), Elegy for the Southern Drawl (1999), Things That Happen Once (1996), Apocalyptic Narrative (1993), and Transparent Gestures (1989), all from Houghton Mifflin, as well as The Unborn (Atlantic Monthly, 1985) and The Story They Told Us of Light (Alabama, 1980). He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Peter IB Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award, a Harper Lee Award, and the 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award. He is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
April 3 Catherine Pierce read from her poetry at Barnes & Noble. Catherine Pierce is the author of Famous Last Words, winner of the 2007 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, and of a chapbook, Animals of Habit (Kent State, 2004). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Slate, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, Blackbird, and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology Best New Poets 2007.
March 25 The English Department's spring symposium featured Patrick Creevy's reading from his upcoming critical monograph on Wordsworth.
March Jason Roberts' "Apropos of Hell" won second place in the poetry competition held by the Southern Literary Festival.  Jessica Balle won third place with "Ten Years Without You."
February The students of the Shackouls Honors College have chose Thomas Anderson 
as the Outstanding Honors Faculty Member for 2008.
Feb. 28

Christopher Coake read from his fiction as part of the Robert Holland Creative Writing series.
Coake is the author of the acclaimed short story collection We’re In Trouble (Harcourt 2005), for which he won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship in 2006. In 2006 he was also named one of GRANTA's Best Young American Novelists. He is a graduate of the MFA program in fiction at Ohio State University. His short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies such as The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, The Southern Review, and Best American Mystery Stories 2004. He teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada.

February 2005 graduate Tammie Rainey Gathings has published a personal memoir. A Mix of Sun and Clouds,Ms. Gathings's account of her childhood, is available at the Book Mart on University Drive.
February Retired department member Meg McGavran Murray has published her literary biography of Margaret Fuller. Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim is published by the University of Georgia Press.
Feb. 7 Cary Holladay read from her fiction as part of the Robert Holland Creative Writing series.
Cary Holladay is the author of The Quick Change Artist (Ohio UP/Swallow Press, 2006), Mercury (Random House, 2002), The Palace of Wasted Footsteps: Stories (University of Missouri Press, 1998) and The People Down South (University of Illinois Press, 1989). Her awards include an O. Henry Prize. Her work has appeared in New Stories From the South: The Year’s Best 2005, as well as in Gulf Coast, Five Points, New Letters, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Memphis.
Feb. 6 Performance group Poetry Alive! appeared at the McCool Auditorium. Their performance was offered through the efforts of The Mississippi Quarterly and Starkville High School and sponsored by the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Starkville Area Arts Council and The Mississippi Quarterly.
Jan 30 Nancy Hargrove offered a lecture on Sylvia Plath for music faculty and students and other interested persons. Nancy Hargrove
January 2008 The Jabberwock Review announces the publication of issue 28.2, featuring poems by Robert Morgan, Michael McFee, Ted Kooser, Margaret Rabb, Jonathan Greene, and others, as well as fiction by up-and-coming writers, and photography by MSU students.

 

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Last Modified
November 20, 2008