Late July, the VCU Department of English migrated its English News blog from Moveable Type to Word Press, the platform recently adopted by VCU.
The new address for the English News blog is http://wp.vcu.edu/english
Recently in Master of Fine Arts Category
MFA student Emilia Phillips was awarded a Mona Van Duyn Scholarship in poetry for the 2011 Sewanee Writers' Conference. The conference will take place in July. Emilia has new poems in or forthcoming with Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, diode, Poems & Plays, and Sycamore Review.
MFAer Dale Smith will have his first scholarly article published in California English this June. The article, "Navigating David Leavitt's "Territory": Exploring LGBT Experience in a College Classroom" is based on his experience teaching the Leavitt story in 295 last semester, and offers strategies to college instructors who want to teach LGBT-themed lit to undergrads.
MFA student, Amira Pierce, was awarded Cream City Review's 2011 A. David Schwartz Prize for short fiction, judged by Ben Percy. Her story, "Gun, Rainbow, Husband, Key" will be a part of their Spring/Summer issue
MFA student Audrey Walls will be presenting at the 2011 VMFA Insights Symposium on April 1. Her presentation is titled "These Leaden Wings: A Poem in Three Voices" and focuses on the art and biography of German artist Anselm Kiefer. The VMFA’s Insights Symposium is a program focusing on recent writings and research by graduate and undergraduate students in Virginia.
MFA alum Jeannette Drake's recent poetry publications include "Victory Garden" in Tough Times Companion, Volume 3 published by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and "Cakewalk" and "Welcome to the New World," in ChickenBones: A Journal.
Drake has also recently published an e-book, Promise: Inspirational Fantasies at Amazon.com. She is completing a writing residency with fourth graders at Swansboro Elementary School under a Partners in the Arts Grant sponsored by the University of Richmond School of Continuing Studies.
Congrats go out to MFA fiction alum, Michele Young-Stone, who recently landed a two-book deal with Simon and Schuster.
Michele's first novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors was published in 2010 to much acclaim.
Read Natalie Sypolt's review of Handbook in v9n2 of Blackbird.
Randy Jones (MFA poetry, 1989) recently completed a slide show featured during Black History Month for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
The show presents text and images relating the history of a "reconstruction-era chapel, built after the Civil War in rural Rockingham County" in the community known as Old Athens and later Zenda, Virginia.
In addition to being this show's creator, Randy is also the contact person for the Virginia Department of Historical Resources for anyone interested in collaborating with DHR on future "Historic Virginia, Site of the Month" slide shows.
More information and Randy Jones' contact information can be found on the "Sources slide" at the end of the Longs Chapel slide show.
Slide show of Longs Chapel
The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to host a reading by acclaimed author, Robert Olen Butler. The reading will take place Thursday, April 7, at 8 pm in the University Commons, Richmond Salons.
