English in the Winter Issue of Reach

CLA's alumni magazine reach celebrates English BA alum and feminist writer Kate Millett, with contributions from Professor Emerita Toni McNaron and alums Arvonne Fraser and Jigna Desai. McNaron noted: "Millett's writings urged me to confront the classics, because she understood firsthand how limiting and debilitating it can be to an aspiring female undergraduate to keep studying ideas and works from theoretical positions that ignored characters and experiences like her own." In addition, books by English alums Amanda Coplin, Cheryl Strayed, and David Wojahn are reviewed in reach's "Bound to Please" section.

5 X Friday: MFA Alum Amanda Coplin

Our 5 X Friday series of interviews with alumni, faculty, and students continues with MFA alumna Amanda Coplin, whose debut novel The Orchardist hit the bestseller charts. Coplin talks about unconventional plots, violence, and the relationship between people and environments. More . . .

Faculty News

Associate Professor Tony C. Brown published his first book, The Primitive, the Aesthetic, and the Savage: An Enlightenment Problematic, with University of Minnesota Press. . . . Professor Maria Damon published a book of collaborative experimental poetry with Finnish artist Jukka-Pekka Kervinen entitled Door Marked X (cPress) . . . The scoop on the royal baby bump from an expert on British history and monarchy: Professor John Watkins gives a fun radio interview about the history of British monarchy and its political power, in light of the Duchess of Cambridge's pregnancy (WTIP-North Shore Community Radio).

5 X Friday: BA Alum David Wojahn

For this week's entry in our 5 X Friday interview series, we check in with David Wojahn (BA '76), who this fall was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Wojahn's 2011 collection World Tree was honored as the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States the previous year. Born and raised in St. Paul, Wojahn confesses he sneaked into John Berryman's classes and helped stop traffic on Washington Avenue. Why? Read on . . .

5 x Farah: Interviewing the Winton Chair

After hosting award-winning Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah for three fall semesters, English bids farewell to the outgoing CLA Winton Chair with a celebration December 7 and 8: special staged readings of Farah's revised play A Stone Thrown at the Guilty. Acclaimed British theater director Irina Brown arrived November 28 and has been workshopping the play with Farah and actors drawn from the Twin Cities professional theater and Somali communities. During his time here Farah has taught classes, published a novel, given many readings and talks, including the fall 2010 CLA Commencement address, and written two plays. "I'm happy that I've been able to do these things," Farah says graciously. More . . .

5 X Friday: PhD Alum Sarah Wadsworth

Marquette University professor Sarah Wadsworth (PhD 2000) takes the mic in this week's installment of 5 X Friday, in which we pose five questions to Department of English alumnae/i, faculty, and students. Wadsworth recently published Right Here I See My Own Books with library scholar Wayne A. Wiegand, about an amazing 8000-volume library of women's writing gathered by women from all over the globe for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. More . . .

5 X Friday: BA Alum Mark Baumgarten

Our series of 5 X Friday interviews with alums, faculty, and students this week features Mark Baumgarten (BA 2001). Baumgarten works as editor-at-large for City Arts, a monthly magazine and online publication that covers arts and culture in Seattle, Washington, and the surrounding Puget Sound area. He just published his first book, a nonfiction account of influential independent music label K Records, this past summer. More . . .

5 X Friday: PhD Candidate Andrew Marzoni

This Friday's installment of 5 X Friday, in which we pose five questions to Department of English alumnae/i, faculty, and students, features PhD candidate Andrew Marzoni. The graduate student has his fingers in several pies here at Minnesota, but he's still looking for a sandwich (see below). He is the co-organizer of a popular new research group related to English, the Theory Reading Group. He contributes to the literary magazine of one of our BA alums. He serves as the research assistant to Somali author Nuruddin Farah, who in December completes a productive three-year residency as the CLA Winton Chair, hosted by English. And he recently published an essay, "Vengeance and Imitation in Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the Jewish Revenge Film," in the new volume Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Kelli Marshall and Gabriele Malcolm (Cambridge Scholars, 2012). More . . . .

1. How did you get your essay in Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century? Does the essay connect to your dissertation topic?
The essay began as a project for a course on Shakespeare and Marlowe that Shirley Garner was teaching. I've been interested in the various relationships between Shakespeare and cinema ever since my undergrad days. This was right around the time that Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds came out, and I couldn't help but notice echoes of Shylock and Barabas--characters from The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta, respectively, which we were reading in Shirley's class--in Tarantino's film which is, effectively, a Jewish revenge fantasy. I started to see the same things at work in a number of different films--Spielberg's Munich, The Hebrew Hammer, and a whole slew of contemporary Israeli films--so I decided to write about it. A few months later, while flipping through calls for papers online, I saw one for Locating Shakespeare, and I submitted the essay.
While the essay doesn't explicitly have much to do with my dissertation--which focuses primarily on American experimental literature and cinema from the 1950s and 1960s--it does serve as an example of an interrogation of film from the point-of-view of literature, and vice versa, which is (generally speaking) the same thing I'm attempting in my dissertation.
2. I see from your Twitter that you write songs? You also contributed creative pieces to the literary magazine Whole Beast Rag: how did that happen?
Writing song lyrics was sort of my gateway drug into the whole literature game. When I was about ten years old I wrote a song on the piano called "Shaking Hands with Abraham Lincoln," a rather demented blues shuffle full of innuendo that I must not have fully understood at the time. Instead of reprimanding me, my mother--who is a total free spirit--encouraged me to write more. I played in a lot of bands in high school and college, most notably a very Bowie-esque duo called The Lawrences of Arabia, which was a songwriting project for myself and my musical mentor, Nate Bergquist, who is now in a really amazing Los Angeles band called The LeBarons. Every now and then I'll hastily write and record a song in my home studio (a laptop, a couple of keyboards, and a bunch of partially broken guitars) and put it up on the Internet under the name Andypants. It's mostly a way to avoid working on my dissertation or grading papers without feeling entirely useless.
I've known Grace Littlefield, the Editor-in-Chief of Whole Beast Rag, since her undergrad days here at the U. She initially wanted [adjunct lecturer] Joe Hughes and I to have a sort of drunken Platonic dialogue (is that redundant?) about Roland Barthes, record it, and send in the transcript for publication--a plan which Joe (wisely, I'm sure) backed out of. Instead, we both wrote loosely theoretical essays which respond to each other. I also sent WBR a quasi-satirical poem about Gilles Deleuze and pizza which I had scribbled down in one of my sporadic moments of insanity.
3. You were one of the great minds who recently began the Theory Reading Group. What was the genesis of that group and why? What brought about the François Laruelle focus this semester?
The Theory Reading Group began in the fall of 2010, once again under the influence of Joe Hughes. A handful of other grad students in the English department (Robb St. Lawrence, Mike Rowe, Stephen McCulloch, Hyeryung Hwang, Wes Burdine, and Valerie Bherer, in particular) and I were responding to a collective desire to get together to discuss works of literary theory and philosophy: Latour, Marx, Foucault, Heidegger, etc. Last year, with the help of funding from Student Unions and Activities and GAPSA, we were able to Skype in a number of huge names in the world of theory (Ray Brassier, Levi Bryant, Claire Colebrook, and others) and bring a few to campus (John Protevi, Patricia Clough, Melissa Littlefield, and Kiarina Kordela). As a result, we've been able to draw a pretty decent crowd from across campus to our events and regular meetings.
Earlier this year, Joe got us in touch with Drew Burk, the director of a new local press, Univocal Publishing, which has been putting out these beautiful, artisanal editions of previously untranslated texts by continental philosophers such as Michel Serres, Gilbert Simondon, and Jean Baudrillard. It so happened that Drew was already set to translate two of Laruelle's books (Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy, which was just released, and Photo-Fiction, A Non-Standard Aesthetics, which is coming out soon) and we bonded over a mutual interest in bringing Laruelle to Minneapolis--which he is, to read at the book launch for Photo-Fiction (on November 15, at Midway Contemporary Art), and to give a lecture at the Weisman Art Museum (on November 17).
4. For two years now, you've been the assistant of award-winning Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah during his fall semester residences in English as the CLA Winton Chair, 2010-12. Right now you're helping with a staged reading of his revised new play A Stone Thrown at the Guilty, December 7 and 8, with British director Irina Brown. Why should we attend? Also: Name three things we might not know about Farah.
Two reasons to go to the staged reading: Nuruddin's three years as Winton Chair are up after this semester. And how often is a perennial Nobel Prize nominee debuting a new play on campus for free?
Thing one: despite his years, Nuruddin has more energy--creative or otherwise--than I can ever hope to have. The day after the first public reading of A Stone Thrown at the Guilty, this past spring, Nuruddin and I sat down in his apartment and proceeded to revise the entire play (which was over a hundred pages long at that point, mind you), line by line, for nine hours. And, of course, he's still revising. Thing two: in addition to being an internationally acclaimed novelist and intellectual, Nuruddin is also a great cook--he can make a mean pot of lentils, especially. And thing three, the thing that was the most mind-blowing to me: he writes all of his novels by hand.
5. You did your BA (University of San Diego) on the left coast, your MA (NYU) on the right, and now you're on the third coast. Why Minnesota? Favorite class so far?
Well, when I was applying to PhD programs, I was living in Brooklyn, while my wonderful girlfriend, Laura, was working at the University Archives at NYU. She grew up in Minnesota, and her family still lives here, so a big part of my decision to come to Minneapolis was the fact that it was one of the few places that could pry her away from New York. It was a good decision in more ways than that one, of course: I wouldn't be the scholar that I am (or am trying to be, anyway) if it weren't for the mentorship of my advisers, Maria Damon and Shevvy Craig--the latter of whom taught the best class I've taken here, a film class titled "The Shattered Screen: Time, Spectacle, the Body."
As far as my thoughts on Minnesota, I'll spare you a Californian's take on the weather in order to bring your attention to the following dilemma: in my three years here, I have yet to find an establishment which serves a decent eggplant parmesan sandwich. Any leads as to the whereabouts of such a sandwich would be most greatly appreciated.
Send us your story! Share your announcements, awards, and news.
For other 5 X Friday interviews, go to our home page.

5 X Friday: BA Alum Andrew Nath

Our series of interviews with department faculty, students and alums continues with Andrew Nath (BA 1991), Executive Vice President at the Premier Bank in Maplewood, an 850 million dollar bank. The best part of his job? "Interacting with people to determine the issues that need resolution and working within a creative environment to solve those issues." Nath has high school-age children looking at colleges, and he says he's advocating for the U. More . . .

English Stars in 10-25 Minnesota Daily

The Minnesota Daily newspaper's October 25 issue contains two feature articles with English connections. CLA Winton Chair Nuruddin Farah, hosted by English, is interviewed about his latest novel Crossbones and its backdrop of Somali turmoil; Farah is reading from the novel, released next week in paperback, Monday October 29 at 7 pm at the Loft Literary Center. PhD candidate Bomi Yoon graces the front page of the Daily--and is interviewed inside about her participation in the production "Under My Skin: Asian American Student Stories" performed Friday and Saturday October 26-27, 7:30 pm, in the Nolte Xperimental Theatre at Rarig. Recent BA alumnae Naomi Ko and Audrey Park are also interviewed for the story. The production is directed by Rick Shiomi, the artistic director of the award-winning Asian-American theater company Mu Performing Arts.

5 X Friday: Professor Paula Rabinowitz

Professor Paula Rabinowitz stars in our third installment of 5 X Friday, in which we pose five questions to Department of English alumnae/i, faculty, and students. Professor Rabinowitz has been instrumental in bringing Australian National University scholar Ruth Barraclough to speak Monday, October 22, about the image of the factory girl in Korean literature. And Rabinowitz last summer published, with co-editor Cristina Giorcelli, Exchanging Clothes: Habits of Being II (University of Minnesota Press), part of a four-volume series deciphering how clothing and accessories offer cultural, political, and social meanings. More . . .

1. This summer you published the second volume in your University of Minnesota series on clothing, Habits of Being, which you edit with Italian literary scholar Cristina Giorcelli. Can you talk about the article of yours included in it?
This one is on the covers of lesbian pulp novels and why everyone always has to wear a slip in them ["Slips of the Tongue: Lesbian Pulp Fiction as How-to-Dress Manuals"]. I did research into the role of these books in the forging of an early lesbian subjectivity and culture. But also I found material on lesbian breast-binding in the 1950s and the underwear people were wearing, butch and femme underwear, so . . . you always learn something.
2. This volume also includes an essay by a former advisee, Katalin Medvedev, called "It Is a Garage Sale at Savers Every Day: An Ethnography of the Savers Thrift Department Store in Minneapolis." Medvedev, now an associate professor at the University of Georgia, earned an Apparel PhD at the U. How did you end up directing a dissertation for the College of Design?
Katalin was a professor in Hungary of Russian Literature and a quite famous radio journalist. She decided to get a PhD in women's studies and came to work with me. Then she figured out that it was easier to get a job with a PhD in design than in women's studies. So she redid her prelims and insisted that I remain her dissertation chair, along with Apparel Professor Emerita Joanne Eicher.
She is a dress historian. Her dissertation is on the use of clothing by women during the Soviet period, communist rule in Hungary, and how women subverted the constraints on them. For instance, dye lots were not the same, so in a matching outfit the skirt would be made in Poland and the jacket in East Germany, and they didn't have the same dye lot so the greens would never match. She interviewed all these women about how they redecorated their clothing. It's clothing as a site of semiotic and political dissent and discourse.
Most of the clothes that were owned by these people were burned when Hungary opened up. Apparently there's like five [communist-era] bras left in Hungary, and they're in museums--it's material culture, and it's been wiped out. A lot of her work is looking at news film to see what they were wearing. She's top-notch.
3. Didn't you have other students from Eastern Europe at that time?
Masha [Zavialova, PhD 2008] and Anca [Parvulescu, PhD 2006]; they were this cohort of brilliant women who were my students, so-called . . . all of whom knew way more than I did about everything. Anca was the Romanian translator of Gloria Steinem; Masha translated Alice Walker into Russian. They all ended up in a seminar I was teaching about materialist feminist theory. Basically what they started working on in that class became their dissertations.
4. You got an Imagine grant to bring Ruth Barraclough from Australia to speak next Tuesday Oct 22: what's your connection with her?
She had a post-doc in History and Asian Language and Literature here a few years ago and is a scholar of Korean working-class women's history. She has a terrific new book out, Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence and Representation in Industrializing Korea (University of California).
She's one of my co-editors on this project, called Sex Text Comrades, on what's called "red love": the part of the Communist Party that people forget about, which was that it was very sexually risqué in the early times. In fact the communists were supportive of gay rights and abortion in the years before Stalin clamped down. And that was central to the story of modernism and modern female experience.
And then there's the global spread of proletarian writing amongst women, which is based not on 1920s communism but rather on the very different temporalities as different nations industrialized. In Korea, women didn't start working in factories until the 1970s, but it's the same story as my story about the women in America in the 1930s [Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America]. So we have scholars from all these different countries thinking about the connection between desire and proletarianism.
Fifty Shades of Red Love? You just need a good book cover.
That's easy; I have 400 of them.
5. ?
I'm working on a monograph called American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street for Princeton. In a way, that pulp fiction lesbian article was the beginning of this project. It's kind of a sequel to my noir book [Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism]. It's about the paperback revolution and the circulation of high culture as trash--in the way that Faulkner became marketed as a sex novelist after Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road was such a big hit, and they turned all these Southern authors into steamy sex writers. You have to come to my office and see these paperbacks . . . .
Alums, send us your story! Share your announcements, awards, and news.
For other 5 X Friday interviews, go to our home page.

5 X Friday: BA Alum Esther Porter

Here's our second installment of 5 X Friday: quick interviews with Department of English alumnae/i, faculty, students, and staff. Five questions (with answers!) posted on Fridays. Email sutt0063@umn.edu if you have comments. This week's subject is Esther Porter (BA summa cum laude, 2005), a former publicist for Coffee House Press who is now freelance editing. This fall she helped launch a new literary magazine, Revolver. More . . .

Kent Bales 1936-2012

We are saddened to report the October 8th passing of Professor Emeritus Kent Bales, who served the Department of English for 41 years until his retirement in 2008. A graduate of Yale (BA) and Berkeley (PhD), Bales joined the English faculty in 1967 and went on to chair the department twice, as well as direct both undergraduate and graduate studies. He also served as chair of both the University's Senate Joint Committee on Faculty Affairs and Senate Joint Committee on Faculty Appointments. A scholar of American literature, he was well-known for his writing on Hawthorne. He is survived by his wife, Maria; daughter Liza (David) Lee and son Tom (Tiziana) Bales, five grandchildren and many other loving family members and good friends. A private celebration of his life will be held in the coming weeks. Memorials preferred to the Alzheimer's Association or the Sierra Club.

5 X Friday: PhD Alum Gerald Jay Goldberg

Today we initiate a new weekly series, 5 X Friday: quick interviews with Department of English alumnae/i, faculty, students, and staff. Yes, there are five questions. And interviews will be posted on Fridays. Easy! Email sutt0063@umn.edu if you have comments. Our first subject is Gerald Jay Goldberg (PhD 1958), who published his first book in 1962, and followed with eight more titles. In this his 83rd year, he authored a suspense/adventure novel with Nan Talese/Doubleday. We caught up him with him via email. More . . .

BA Alum Wins Major Poetry Prize

The Academy of American Poets has announced the winners of its annual major prizes, and David Wojahn (BA 1976) has been awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which honors the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. Of Wojahn's 2011 collection World Tree (University of Pittsburgh), judge Linda Gregerson noted: "Exquisitely cadenced, politically astute, large of heart, and keen of mind, these are poems of extraordinary moral penetration. They are also a joy to read." Wojahn will receive $25,000. The other judges were David St. John and current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. Wojahn is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and serves as a member of the program faculty of the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of the Fine Arts. World Tree represents his eighth collection of poetry. He studied with Michael Dennis Browne while at the University of Minnesota.

Nuruddin Farah Interviewed in Guardian

Somali novelist and CLA Winton Chair Nuruddin Farah, who is housed in English during his time at the University of Minnesota, is interviewed at length in the Guardian (September 21 issue). This December Farah completes his three year term as the Winton Chair, but not before he celebrates the paperback release of his 2011 novel Crossbones (7:30 pm October 29 at the Loft Literary Center). He will also present the latest version of his play A Stone Thrown at the Guilty with staged public readings in late November/early December; he has been collaborating with Russian-via-Britain theater director Irina Brown, who has directed for the Royal National Theatre (Brown will be in attendance). In addition, he is teaching the English graduate seminar International Fiction Written in Second Tongues.

High Ranking in Literary Criticism/Theory

U.S. News & World Report published its 2012 rankings of graduate schools, and the University of Minnesota is ranked #13 among public and private universities in the Literary Criticism and Theory field within English. Congratulations to our impressive faculty and graduate students!

Two Alums Win American Book Awards

The winners of the 33rd Annual American Book Awards, sponsored by the Before Columbus Foundation, include MFA alumna Arlene Kim and BA alumnus Ed Bok Lee. Kim's debut poetry collection, What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2011. Lee's second collection, Whorled , was published in 2011 with Coffee House Press; it also won a 2012 Minnesota Book Award for poetry. There are 11 American Book Awards this year, across memoir, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. According to the Before Columbus website, the awards "were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community." The American Book Awards will be formally presented October 7 at the University of California, Berkeley. Congratulations to Kim and Lee!

BA Alum Returns to Bestseller List

BA alumnus Sam Kean made the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list for the second time the week of August 12 with his second book The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code (Little Brown). His debut book The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements was a 2010 bestseller. Michael Schaub, on National Public Radio, raved, "Kean is one of America's smartest and most charming science writers, and his new book could be perfect for summer readers who prefer some substance with their fun." Kean was a double major in English and Physics. We interviewed him last summer.

Professor Hampl Edits Nonfiction Ploughshares

The fall 2012 issue of the literary magazine Ploughshares was guest edited by Regents Professor and memoirist Patricia Hampl. The all-nonfiction issue features a rare nonfiction piece by novelist and Edelstein-Keller Professor Charles Baxter entitled "What Happens in Hell." Other writers represented include Phillip Lopate and Mary Gordon. The issue is available now.

New Book by Professor Rabinowitz

Professor Paula Rabinowitz is the co-editor with Cristina Giorcelli of Exchanging Clothes: Habits of Being II (University of Minnesota Press), the second volume of a four-part series charting the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing, dress and accessories to decipher how materials offer meanings. This particular volume focuses on the "global exchange of material commodities across time and space but also of the ideas, images, colors, and textures related to fashion." Professor Rabinowitz recently blogged about a clothing exchange in the early '70s that still haunts her: the purchase of a couture Molyneux for $25.

MFA Alum Writes NYT "Modern Love"

MFA alumna Elizabeth Foy Larsen published an essay in the New York Times' Modern Love column on Sunday, August 5. "Untying a Birth Mother's Hands" explores the experience of meeting the birth mother of Larsen's adopted daughter in Guatemala. The decision to search for the birth mother was a fraught one, Larsen writes: "Most important, what if our daughter one day resented that we made such a colossal decision when she was too young to decide if an open adoption was right for her?" Larsen is working on a book about international adoption. In October, she publishes Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun (Bloomsbury) with Joshua Glenn, with whom she writes a column at Slate.

BA Alumna Takes Vita.mn Fiction Prize

The Twin Cities weekly newspaper Vita.mn, which is produced by the Star Tribune, announced the winner of their fourth Annual Summer Story Contest, and BA alumna Regan Smith ('09) took first prize, worth $750. The 260 entrants wrote 300-600 word short stories on the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins. Smith's entry, "Spud," explored sloth through the vehicle of an enslaved potato.

MFA Alums Win Emerging Writers Grants

MFA alumnae Yuko Taniguchi ('01) and Katie Hae Leo ('09) were selected as two out of five 2012 Loft Minnesota Emerging Writers' Grant Winners. The winners receive grants of up to $10,000 and will also be provided with professional assistance "to develop and implement multifaceted plans for their artistic endeavors." The Loft received 200 qualified entries, which were narrowed down to 20 finalists. Leo is a playwright and essayist; Taniguchi, a poet and novelist. Congratulations!

CLA's Reach Magazine Features Alums

Four books by English alumnae/i are featured in the summer issue of the CLA publication Reach: The latest collections by poets and BA alums Ed Bok Lee and Jim Moore are reviewed by MFA candidate Christine Friedlander and MFA alumna Molly Sutton Kiefer respectively. MA alumna Mary Francois Rockcastle's novel In Caddis Wood is reviewed by Reach editor Mary Pattock, and MFA alum Gayla Marty's memoir Memory of Trees by MFA alum Terri Sutton. Readers can get 20 percent off books reviewed in Reach's Bound to Please section at Coffman Bookstore (online as well).

Baxter Noted in Kaler Article

Seeking to reacquaint Minnesotans with the U's impact on "every one of Minnesota's 87 counties," University President Eric Kaler published a July 2 opinion in the Star Tribune listing recent accomplishments. Second on his list is the granting this spring of the Rea Award for the Short Story to Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing Charles Baxter. Kaler goes on to mention an English alumnus: "In Minnesota, 'above average' is important, but with apologies to Garrison Keillor (class of '66), this university is excellent--and far better than many realize." Kudos to Kaler for celebrating the importance of English and the humanities along with the University's technological and scientific achievements.

English Alum Kicks Off Oprah Book Club 2.0

On June 4, Oprah Winfrey's OWN network and O magazine kicked off Oprah's Book Club 2.0, a reading club built around online interaction. The first book chosen for the venture is by a BA alumna, Cheryl Strayed. An English and Women's Studies double major (1997), Strayed in March published Wild, a memoir of her 1995 solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. The book has received widespread praise--even bringing Dwight Garner of the New York Times to tears. On the Oprah's Book Club 2.0 website, Ms. Winfrey explains her choice: "It is just a wild ride of a read . . . . It is stimulating, it is thought-provoking, it is soul-enhancing. This book is about being brave when you didn't think you could be."

English@Minnesota Fall '12 Writers Series!

Zadie Smith, discussing her forthcoming novel NW, is among the writers presented for free this fall by the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program. Smith, the prize-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty, will give the Esther Freier Endowed Lecture 7:30 pm, Tuesday, October 23, at Coffman Union Theater. Other authors in the English@Minnesota Writers Series are: Antonya Nelson, short story writer and novelist (7 pm, October 16, Weisman Museum); poet Christopher Kennedy (7 pm, November 7, Weisman); and creative nonfiction writer Lia Purpura (7 pm, November 14, venue TBA), all sponsored by Creative Writing and the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Endowment. Creative Writing also presents poets and professors Peter Campion and Ray Gonzalez reading at the Weisman 7 pm on October 4. All events are open to the public; no tickets necessary. See you there!

Pawlowski Defense

Doctoral candidate Lucia Pawlowski will defend her dissertation, "High Theory, the Teaching of Writing, and the Crisis of the University," as directed by Dr. Geoff Sirc, on Thursday, June 7th, at noon in the Wright Room (Lind 202). All are welcome for the public portion of the defense.

New Creative Writing Program Newsletter

Check out the Spring 2012 Alumni Newsletter from the Creative Writing Program for news and features about alumni, current students, and faculty. The issue features interviews with Director Julie Schumacher, about her new book for young adults, The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, and with Professor Charles Baxter, recent winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Finally, congratulations to this spring's graduates of the MFA program, who defended their creative theses earlier this month (photo left): Elizabeth Abbot, Lucas de Lima, Sarah Fox, Alex Grant, Amir Hussain, Chris Keimig, David Malley, Wahida Omar, Claire Stanford, Molly Sutton Kiefer, and Andrea Uptmor.

PhD and MFA Placement

Congratulations to our doctoral and Creative Writing Program graduates, who have secured tenure track positions this year at the following institutions: University of Arkansas, Fort Smith; Fresno Pacific University; Georgia Perimeter College; LaGuardia Community College in New York; St. Francis University; Seattle University; University of St. Thomas; Washington University, St. Louis; and University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

Baxter Receives Rea Award, "Best Novelist" Recognition

Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing Charles Baxter has won the 2011 Rea Award for the Short Story, given annually to a living American or Canadian writer whose published work has made a "significant contribution in the discipline of the short story as an art form." The Rea Award honors writers "for originality and influence on the genre," rather than any one collection or story. Baxter receives $30,000 and joins a list of acclaimed honorees including Alice Munro, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, and John Updike. The jurors this year were Lorrie Moore, Stuart Dybeck, and Bill Henderson. Baxter's latest book, the 2011 Gryphon: New & Selected Stories, was noted in the jurors' citation, which reads in part: "Charles Baxter is a writer of elegant sentences, an expert in the mechanics of dramatic narration, and a master of psychological exile, which is the unexotic but special terrain of the short story." Meanwhile, the Star Tribune named him "Best Novelist" in its May 16 Best of Minnesota section. (The Star Tribune also named MA alumna Erin Hart Best Mystery Writer and BA/MA/PhD alumna Joyce Sutphen runner-up to Robert Bly for Best Poet.) Congratulations!

PhD Alumna Recognized

Poet Marilyn Nelson (PhD 1979) in April received the Frost Medal, the Poetry Society of America's highest award. The Medal is presented annually for "distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry." Previous winners of this award include Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Moore, and Charles Simic, who was the 2011 recipient. Nelson reads in Minneapolis 7:30 pm May 21 at Plymouth Congregational Church.

Students Receive Research Support

Two PhD candidates were awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for 2012-13: Sunyoung Ahn (adviser: Tim Brennan) and Will Kanyusik (adviser: Siobhan Craig). In addition, six PhD and MFA candidates received financial support this summer through the Graduate Research Partnership Program: Sunyoung Ahn (advised by Tim Brennan), Sally Franson (Charles Baxter), Andrew Marzoni (Siobhan Craig), Caitlin McHugh (Katherine Scheil), Trenton Olson (Andy Elfenbein), and Kerry Voigt (Ray Gonzalez). In addition, the MFA program awarded CLA research/travel fellowships to Aaron Apps, Christine Friedlander, and Flor Lauria, while the PhD program awarded short-term research grants to Wes Burdine, Andrew Marzoni, and Davu Seru. Congratulations to all!

New Faculty Books

Start your summer reading now! Associate Professor Katherine Scheil this spring published She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America (Cornell University Press, 2012), a fascinating look at how book clubs provided encouragement for female literary education during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--and a path into public life. This is Professor Scheil's third book. In May, Professor Julie Schumacher publishes her fifth book for younger readers, The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls (Delacorte, 2012). She won a 2007 Minnesota Book Award for her novel The Book of One Hundred Truths.

Alumni and Faculty Celebrate Mother's Day

Garrison Keillor (BA '66), wearing his bookstore owner hat, is presenting "Honor Thy Mother," a free reading 3 pm, Sunday, May 13, with Regents Professor Patricia Hampl, Professor Julie Schumacher, MFA alumna Shannon Olson, and Keillor himself. The event, sponsored by Keillor's emporium, Common Good Books, takes place at Macalester College's Weyerhaeuser Chapel (St. Paul). Professor Hampl and Keillor were editors together at the University of Minnesota undergraduate literary magazine Ivory Tower. Keillor and Olson, the author of Welcome to My Planet: Where English Is Sometimes Spoken, once taught a class together on comedy writing at the U.

In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Norman Fruman

Professor Emeritus Norman Fruman, a member of the English faculty from 1978 to 1994, died April 19, at the age of 88 in Laguna Beach, California. Fruman was, as he told his friends, "famous and infamous" as the author of Coleridge, The Damaged Archangel (Braziller, 1971), which revealed that the English poet was a serial plagiarist. Fruman's book, described at the time as "relentlessly and devastatingly polemical and one of the most exciting I have read in years," by the New York Times critic, has been the focus of obituaries in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Star Tribune, and the Laguna Beach Patch. Fruman was also a combat platoon leader at the Battle of the Bulge and was afterward a German prisoner of war. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Doris, three children, and four grandchildren.

Professional Skills Workshop

This semester Graduate Studies in the Department of English is pleased to present a new series of workshops on various professional skills, the last of which takes place Friday May 4 at noon in Lind Hall 207A. This "Applying for Fellowships" session covers such topics as where to find fellowships, how to write a fellowship application, etc. Mandatory for English graduate students planning to apply for fellowships in the 2012-13 academic year.

Majors Graduating with CESP Recognition

Three English undergraduates are graduating this spring with Community Engagement Scholars Program recognition: Kari Eloranta, Abdiasis Hirsi, and Anna Kraemer. This honor recognizes that the students have performed 400 hours of community engagement addressing social issues and community needs throughout their undergraduate careers at the University of Minnesota. They also have completed reflections on those volunteer experiences, as well as a seminar and final project. The students receive recognition on their official transcripts and at commencement. The Department of English honored these students at our annual Campus Community Colloquium on April 30. Eloranta in addition received a University of Minnesota Alumni Association Student Leadership Award later that evening at the President's Student Leadership and Service Awards Banquet. Congratulations!

Defenses this Week

Two PhD candidates will defend their dissertations this week. Elissa Hansen will present the public portion of her defense Wednesday, May 2, at 9:30 am in Heller Hall 1229. Molly Gage will present the public portion of her defense Friday, May 4, at 10:30 am in Lind Hall 202.

Ivory Tower Wins Tony Diggs Innovation Award

Ivory Tower, the literary and arts magazine created for and by undergraduates at the University of Minnesota, has won the Tony Diggs Innovation Award from the Student Activities Office. These Excellence Awards are intended to recognize student group achievements; the Innovation Award specifically recognizes student groups that have displayed innovation and/or fostered creativity through their program/events. Ivory Tower, which is edited and produced through the year-long English course Literary Magazine Production Lab, this year introduced the "Write and Return" program: circulating notebooks to encourage student writing and drawing on campus, as well as to boost submissions to the journal. Ivory Tower also helps organize the Writer's Block writing workshops, among other activities. The new issue of Ivory Tower is celebrated 7 pm, Wednesday, April 25, at the Whole in Coffman Union with readings, music, and art. Congratulations to the Ivory Tower staff and the writers and artists included in the 2012 Ivory Tower!

Publishing Internships!

Interested in getting a handle on the publishing world? The Department of English sponsors annual internships with the University of Minnesota Press. Two English majors are chosen for year-long internships in which they work on editorial, marketing, and production functions and receive four credits each semester. Application deadline for next year is April 20: email cover letter, unofficial transcript, and 2-3 page purpose statement drawing connections between academic work, this internship, and career goals. Must be of junior standing and have completed EngL 3001 Textual Analysis and at least two additional "foundation requirements" in major.

Annual Campus-Community Colloquim

On Monday, April 30, the Annual English Department Campus-Community Colloquium takes place 12:45 - 2:15 pm in Lind Hall 207A. Students from Eric Daigre's year-long Community Learning Internships course will present about their literacy work in the K-12, nonprofit, and adult basic education worlds. Lively presentations, dialogues with community partners, and Q and A sessions. Food, beverages, and celebration!

Writer's Block Workshop with Juliet Patterson

Ivory Tower presents an opportunity to work on revising poems with local poet Juliet Patterson this Wednesday the 18th in Coffman 304 at 5:30 pm. Patterson is a poet, community activist, and teaching artist living in Minneapolis. Her first book, The Truant Lover, won the Nightboat Poetry Prize in 2004. Her forthcoming book, Threnody, speaks about ecological crisis and our "attempts to conceptualize nature and wilderness in the face of loss." If possible, PLEASE BRING 3-4 POEMS you'd like to take a fresh look at, but don't reread them before the workshop begins! Mesa pizza!

Job Placement Meeting

On Thursday, April 26, at 3 pm, there will be a required meeting for people going on the job market in fall 2012; we will discuss the overall job search process as well as the documents you will need to work on over the summer. Strongly recommended for students who do not plan to go on the job market this fall but do plan to go on the market the year after: getting an early start on the job search documents and the overall process is vitally important. Lind Hall 207A.

BA Alum Strayed in National Press

Cheryl Strayed (BA 1997) has been featured in Interview Magazine, Vogue Magazine, and the New York Times in the past month, after publishing the memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Knopf). Strayed is the author of a 2005 novel, Torch. She also writes the advice column "Dear Sugar" in the online literary magazine Rumpus. She grew up in Minnesota and lives now in Portland, Oregon.

Award-Winning Students

Second-year MFA Kate Johnston is the recipient of the Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship for 2012, a ten-week fellowship with the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota. Kate's project concerns Somali refugees in the Twin Cities and solitary confinement in Minnesota prisons. . . . PhD candidate David Moberly has accepted a Critical Language Scholarship from the US Department of State and will be traveling to Tangier, Morocco, to study Arabic in an intensive summer program. . . . PhD candidate John Pistelli has been offered a place at the NEH "Oscar Wilde and His Circle" summer seminar at UCLA, an award that comes with a $3900 NEH fellowship. Of the 16 Summer Scholars, only two are graduate students; the rest are faculty. . . . Congratulations also to MFAs Victoria Scher and Elisabeth Workman, recipients of Marcella DeBourg Fellowships for summer 2012, granted $1700 each to complete a writing project that gives creative expression to women's lives.

English Major Triumphs in Spoken Word

Last year, English undergraduate Michael Lee was named the 2011 Best Individual Poet at the national College Unions Poetry Slam, leading the University of Minnesota team to a fourth place finish. He also received a 2011 Verve Grant for Spoken Word Artists, the only spoken word grant in the country. And now, in collaboration with Runner Runner, a Minneapolis production company, he has made a stunning video of his elegiac spoken word poem "Pass On," which has been entered in the 2012 Vimeo online video awards. More . . .

President's Student Leadership & Service Awardees

Two English majors and one MFA candidate have been selected to receive a President's Student Leadership & Service Award this spring. English senior Kari Eloranta is actively involved with civic engagement and is the undergraduate Service-Learning Mentor for the English course, The Literature of Public Life (ENGL 1501W); she also coordinates the University YMCA's tutoring projects this year. English senior Echo Martin is the web editor for two English student publications, Ivory Tower and Parachute, and has been involved with service learning and the English major student group FUSE. Third-year MFA candidate Claire Stanford is involved with sustainable agriculture and youth farm work in the Frogtown neighborhood of Saint Paul. Only about 35 students--both undergraduate and graduate--are selected from across the University, approximately one-half of one percent of the student body, for exceptional leadership and service to the University of Minnesota and the surrounding community.

Graduate Students Publish Books!

Three current graduate students in the Department of English are publishing books this year. PhD candidate Katie Robison was recently interviewed in the Minnesota Daily about her new debut young adult novel Downburst (Quil Books, Inc.). She is working toward a PhD in medieval and early modern literature. Meanwhile, MFA candidate Feng Sun Chen just published her first poetry collection Butcher's Tree with Black Ocean. MFA candidate Sarah Fox publishes Mother Substance, her second collection with Coffee House Press, next fall. The three authors will be reading from their respective books at 12:30 pm April 26, in Lind Hall 207A.

Minnesota State Arts Board Grant Winners

Congratulations to our 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board grant winners! MFA candidates Elizabeth Abbott, David Malley, and Andrea Uptmor received grants to support their creative work. Alumnae/i winners include Matt Burgess, Kathleen Glasgow, Brian Laidlaw, Heather McPherson, Margie Newman, Michael Opperman, and Holly Vanderhaar.

Hancher to Join Senate Consultive Committee

Professor Michael Hancher has been asked to serve a one-year term on the Faculty Consultative Committee of the Faculty Senate, which serves as the consulting body to President Eric Kaler and as the executive committee of the Faculty Senate. Professor Hancher finished a three-year term to this elected body in 2011.

Prospective Student Visit

The Department of English welcomes prospective graduate students March 22-23. Events scheduled include a reading by MFA alum authors, a subfield meeting and conference, class visits, library tour, and dinner with graduate students and faculty. We look forward to meeting you!

Minnesota at AWP Conference

Creative Writing Program faculty, students, and alumni are heading southeast next week for the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Chicago. Many are reading, participating on panels, and/or representing at the book fair, including Program Director Julie Schumacher and Professor Maria Damon. A sample listing here.

Nuruddin Farah Staged Reading

Novelist Nuruddin Farah, the College of Liberal Arts Winton Chair hosted by English, will receive a public staged reading of his latest play, A Stone Thrown at the Guilty, February 18 and 19 at 7:30 pm. The reading will be directed by University of Minnesota Assistant Professor of Theater Dominic Taylor, featuring a a cast of professional actors. The play is inspired by two historical uprisings in Somalia under British rule, during 1922 and 1939-40. The free event takes place at the Rarig Center Stoll Thrust Theatre; no tickets necessary.

Nabil Matar to Receive AMSS Award

Professor Nabil Matar will receive the 2012 Building Bridges Award from the Association of Muslim Social Scientists on March 28 at Cambridge University. The award is given in recognition of Professor Matar's pioneering scholarship on the relationship between Islamic civilization and early modern Europe, which has helped to raise awareness of the historical roots of Western perceptions of Islam. More on Professor Matar.

Alums Are Minnesota Book Award Finalists

Minnesota Book Award finalists were announced Saturday by the Friends of the St. Paul Library, and finalists include books by alums Eric Dregni and Kevin Fenton (MFAs), Ed Bok Lee and Jim Moore (BAs), and Mary Rockcastle (MA). Congratulations!

English Receives Imagine Fund Awards

Imagine Fund grant programs support projects in the arts, humanities, and design at the University of Minnesota. Every year, faculty awards support innovative research in these areas; this year 150 awards were given, for up to $5,000 each. Congratulations to English faculty recipients: Timothy Brennan, Lois Cucullu, Maria Damon, Genevieve Escure, Maria Fitzgerald, Nabil Matar, Paula Rabinowitz, Jani Scandura, and Katherine Scheil. In addition, Professor Maria Damon received a 2012 Imagine Fund Special Events Award to enable a visit from sound poet Jaap Blonk.

Dislocate Magazine Design Contest

dislocate literary journal, run by Creative Writing Program graduate students at the University of Minnesota, is holding a contest for a graphic design intern. The winner receives $250 and the chance to layout issue 8 of dislocate. Any undergraduate or graduate student attending the U is welcome to apply, as long as s/he is proficient with InDesign software. Interested students should send examples of design work, including links to online portfolios, to dislocate.magazine@gmail.com with the subject line "Graphic Design Internship." Show us what you've got!

Charles Baxter on Writing/Teaching Fiction

In a UMNews profile this week, Edelstein-Keller Professor in Creative Writing Charles Baxter talks about the pleasure of discovering fictional characters and the importance of fear and failure in fiction. "I'd say you need to be able to imagine, and want to imagine, what people do when things begin to go wrong," he notes. Baxter is the author most recently of the story collection Gryphon, which was named to the New York Times' "100 Notable Books of 2011" list. He is currently working on a collection of short stories based on virtues.

John Watkins Quoted on Margaret Thatcher

Distinguished McKnight University Professor John Watkins was interviewed regarding former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Meryl Streep's new biopic in the Star Tribune and on Fox 9's The Buzz show January 12 with Jason Matheson; he was also quoted in Minn Post. Professor Watkins' research explores sovereignty and queenship, as well as medieval and early modern diplomacy and political culture; he lived in England during the years Thatcher was Prime Minister.

Dinner & Digital with Michael Hancher

Professor of English Michael Hancher will be the speaker at a Friends of the Libraries dinner 5 pm, Thursday, January 26, at the Campus Club. Professor Hancher, past president of the Dictionary Society of North America, will riff on questions that have long puzzled dictionary makers and dictionary users--the relationship of things, names of things, and pictures of things--and explore ways in which these puzzles just may become solvable with the migration of dictionaries from print to cyberspace. Tickets are $12.99 for students, $25.99 for adults. Reservations at 612-626-7788.

Peter Campion Narrates Upson Song Cycle

On Friday, January 20, the Friends of the Libraries will present "An Upson Song Cycle": the premiere performance of songs by composer Linda Kachelmeier based on poems by Arthur Upson, performed by local tenor Roy Heilman and accompanied by Mary Jo Gothmann. Assistant professor of creative writing Peter Campion will introduce and narrate the program. Poet Arthur Upson was a University of Minnesota student and English lecturer at the turn of the 19th century. Upon then-president Cyrus Northrop's request, Upson reworked the song "Hail! Minnesota," adding the second verse to what became the University hymn and later the official state song. His death in 1908 at age 31 cut short a literary career filled with promise. The free event starts at 7:30 pm in the Upson Room of Walter Library. Make a reservation online or call 612-624-9339.