New English Alumnae/i Magazine

What will retiring Regents Professor Tom Clayton miss about teaching? "Everything," he declares. "What I will most miss is the kind of intellectual stimulation I get from asking questions of students, getting responses, hearing questions, responding, and having my mind in continual process," he continues. "There's no substitute." The new English at Minnesota alumnae/i magazine features newly Emeritus Professor Clayton, along with an interview with another Regents Professor of English, Madelon Sprengnether, who's just published a poetry collection and a memoir. Plus summer reading recommendations, news, and more!

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.

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).

Nuruddin Farah in New York Times

Somali novelist and playwright Nuruddin Farah, who the Department of English is hosting during his three years as CLA Winton Chair, describes the view from his window in the New York Times this past Sunday July 3. It is often an imaginary view, Farah notes, as he envisions a Mogadishu made up of past remembrances and current experiences, while he lives and writes far away in Cape Town, Newcastle, Minneapolis.

Imagine Fund Annual Faculty Awards

Seven Department of English professors received $5000 Imagine Fund Awards for 2011. The Imagine Fund is a unique University of Minnesota system-wide program open to humanities, arts, and design faculty to support a range of projects and enhance the presence of these disciplines at the university. Congratulations to Timothy Brennan, Maria Damon, Qadri Ismail, Paula Rabinowitz, Jani Scandura, Omise'eke Tinsley, and John Wright.

Emerita McNaron Leads Arb Book Club

Professor of English Emerita Toni McNaron will lead a six-session monthly book club at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum with the focus, appropriately, on garden plots (that is, plots involving gardens). The Minneapolis Star Tribune features an interview with McNaron, who notes, "When you say 'garden,' white Western culture thinks of Eden. The garden is a mythic, iconic place." Authors will include Hawthorne, Silko, and Woolf, among others.