Misssissippi State University Department of English

Departmental News & Events

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mprice@ra.msstate.edu

        

Upcoming

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

Schedule complete. Readings, sponsored variously, will resume in the fall.

 
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.

 

Recent

 
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.
December 2007

MSU Undergraduate Writing Contest winners have been announced:

Fiction:

  • First place: Misty Smith, "The Life and Times of Sarah Lee Greer: Easter Sunday"
  • Second place: Tameka Johnson, "Timberk Creek"

Poetry:

  • First place: Jason Roberts, "Apropos of Hell"
  • Second place: Jessica Balle, "Ten Years Without You"
  • Honorable mention: Jason Roberts, "To My Unborn Daughter"; Matt Clark, "Penance"
Nov. 14 Sigma Tau Delta's annual induction ceremony was held at Harvey's.
Nov. 13 Michael McFee performed a reading, "Things as They Eloquently Are," at Swalm Hall.
November Tyler Trimm was awarded the 2007 Peyton Ward Williams, Jr. Award for his essay "Masks in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing."
Oct. 29 Language theorist Stephen Pinker spoke at Mississippi State as part of the Conerly Honors Lecture Series.
Oct. 26 Richard Lyons offered a reading and lecture for the Humanities Award.
Oct. 25 The English Department's Fall Colloquium featured Shalyn Clagget's presentation "Victorian Popular Science Illustrated: Positing the Psychological Basis of Character."
Oct. 17 Poet Tina Barr read from her works in the first fall presentation in the Robert Holland Creative Writing Series.
Oct. 15 Novelist Bapsi Sidhwa, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of four novels: An American Brat, The Pakistani Bride, The Crow Eaters, and Cracking India (also published as Ice-Candy Man), was at Mississippi State. Her visit was sponsored by the Holmes Cultural Diversity Center and the Honors Program.
October

Nancy Hargrove has received the Best Article of the Year ;Award from South Atlantic Review, where she published "T. S. Eliot's& Year Abroad, 1910-11: The Visual Arts."

Also, a chapter from Nancy's book on Sylvia Plath, "Sylvia Plath's Poems in 1957," has been re-published in Harold Bloom's Modern Critical Views, the volum focused on Plath.

Nancy Hargrove
September Emily Stinson's article, "Blood Meridian's Man of Many Masks," has been accepted by Southwestern American Literature. Also, Story South will soon publish her short story, "To the Races."
September Ashley Lancaster has published "Weeding Out the Recessive Gene: Representations of the Evolving Eugenics Movement in Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre" in The Southern Literary Review.
September

Scholarships awarded to students in English for the 2007-2008 academic year include:

  • Gwin Scholarship: Misty Smith, Justin McElroy, Nick White
  • Butler Scholarship: Mathew Clark, Nick White, David Johnson, Leslie Adams
  • Skelton Scholarship: Rebecca Oswalt
  • Magruder Scholarship: Rebecca Oswalt
September The Writing Center has updated its url: http://www.writingcenter.msstate.edu
September

Michael Kardos's short story, "Maximum Security" has been accepted for publication in The Southern Review.

August Greg Bentley's "The Falchion and the Phallus in "The Rape of Lucrece" is scheduled for publication in the special issue on Lacan and Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Yearbook.
August Catherine Pierce's poetry collection, Famous Last Words, was awarded Saturnalia Books' Poetry Prize for 2007. The volume is scheduled for publication in January 2008.

 

 Mississippi State University

For questions or information about this page contact: Marty Price

Last Modified
June 9, 2008