Alumni Notes:
Dennis Sweeney's (MFA '15) book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and is due out from Autumn House Press in March 2021. In fictional prose poems, it follows two characters as they create a domestic life in the blank expanse of Antarctica. More information about the book is available here.
Rowan Russell (former film student) produced a film, I Trapped the Devil, which was recently purchased by IFC-Midnight, the Independent Film Channel horror division that releases films theatrically and then showcases them on the IFC cable channel.
Hannah Baggott (MFA '15 and winner of the Lisa Ede Award) was awarded the Diane O. Jones Excellence in Service-Learning Award at University of North Carolina Pembroke, where she teaches classes in rhetoric and composition. She is the first-lecturer at UNC Pembroke to win the award, which honors those whose pedagogy fosters community and civic engagement.
Charles Barkley (MA '16) is currently working as an Enrollment Advisor for Northwestern University School of Professional Studies in Chicago, IL. He has recently been accepted to Northwestern's Master of Science in Higher Education Administration and Policy program and plans to begin coursework this fall while continuing to work in university admissions.
Robin Cedar's (MFA '17) poem, "Exactly Where I Was", was published in the Front Porch Journal.
Mike Chin's (MFA '16) story, "You Might Forget the Sky Was Ever Blue", was recently published in the Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature. This story is a sequel to, "The End of the World" which was published in Front Porch Journal.
Cole Crawford (MA '17) published a chapter ("Transforming Working-Class Writers and Writing: Digital Editions, Projects, and Analyses") in A History of British Working Class Literature (Cambridge UP: April 2017, ed. Bridget Keegan and John Goodridge). Cole also presented at DHU2: Symposium on the Digital Humanities (Salt Lake City) in February on his paper, "Global Bonds: Expanding Access to the Linus Pauling Papers via Enhanced Digital Finding Aid". He presented at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Minneapolis) in March on a panel titled, "Laboring-Class Poets in Print and Digital Culture". He also presented at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (University of Victoria, June 2017): "Listen Up!: Oregon Object Stories" and at the DH2017 (Montreal, August 2017): "Data Visualization in Archival Finding Aids: A New Paradigm for Access." With Anne Bahde, History of Science Librarian, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, OSU Libraries and Press, as well at DH2017 (Montreal, August 2017): "DHConnections: Examining the Growth of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute Community".
Geffrey Davis (BA English ’06) winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Prize for his debut collection of personal poems, was highlighted as one of 20 “Visionary Arkansans” for 2016.
Anne Dennon (BA English '14) is finishing her MA at University of Washington Ellensburg this spring. Her thesis focuses on the evolution of the femme fatale as a compromised feminist icon from Victorian sensation novels through to film noir and neo-noir. She plans to apply to PhD programs this coming academic year.
Alana Folsom's (MFA '16) poem titled "Things I've Learned From My Father" was recently published in The Fem Literary Magazine.
Emily Foster (MA '17) presented at the Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media, and also presented at the Environmental Arts and Humanities Graduate Conference (hosted by OSU).
Bradley Freeman (BA English '16) is presently teaching as adjunct faculty at Seattle University having obtained his PhD in 2014 from Ohio State; his dissertation was entitled "Asian American Radical Literature: Marxism, Revolution, and the Politics of Form".
Megan Goss (MFA '17) was awarded a graduate student research and writing retreat through the Spring Creek Project for summer 2017.
Zoe Estelle Hitzel's (MFA '14) collection of poems The Body, Lined with Diamonds was published in Sundress Publications as part of their 2018 catalog.
Jon Josten (MA '15) wrote a review on The David Foster Wallace Reader published by Little, Brown as well as a book chapter that will be published June 2018 in Pieces of the Heartland: Representing Early Twentieth Century Midwestern Places (Hastings College Press) titled "Migratory Bodies: Failed Commemoration in Richard Powers The Echo Maker and Gain".
Dr. Jon S. Knox (BA English '13) had another book published in April 2017 from Wipf & Stock—John Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons: An Annotated Summary. He also has a book coming out in Fall 2017—God in the Details: A Biblical Survey of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (Kendall-Hunt, 2017)
Katy Krieger (BA English and Psychology '14) earned her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Psychology and English) and is about to start a PhD program (English) at the University of Oklahoma.
Jessica Lane (BA English '17) will be starting a Masters of Teaching at Eastern Oregon University.
Julia Malye (MFA '17) recently received a grant from the President's Commission on the Status of Women to travel to New Orleans and conduct research for an upcoming fiction project.
Emily McLemore (MA '17) presented at the International Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 11th-14th. She will be discussing her conference paper titled, "Lest that I Confounded Be: Willful Virginity & Radical Femininity in the Second Nun's Tale", as part of a panel that she organized titled "Reconsidering the Second Nun's Tale."
Marisol Moreno Ortiz (BA English with minor in Writing '14) will start a Master’s program in Library Science with Louisiana State University in 2017. She earned her MA in English from Portland State and recently completed a position as College Access Corps Coordinator for AmeriCorps.
Karli Rumburg (BA English '17) will be starting a Masters of Teaching at Stanford University.
Dahlia Seroussi (MFA '14) had her poem "Picaflor" published in the North American Review. Read it here.
Samuel Schwartz (BA English '01) is now a full-time instructor for SWLF teaching Writing and American Literature Survey courses for the English major. Sam arrived in the School a few years ago after completing a PhD at University of Arizona and spending six years at the Virginia Commonwealth University as a tenure-line faculty member.
Michael Shou-Yung Shum (MFA '11) published the novel Queen of Spades (Forest Avenue Press, 2017).
Mackenzie Smith (MFA '17) was awarded a graduate student research and writing retreat through the Spring Creek Project for summer 2017.
Erica Trabold’s (MFA '16) essay, “A List of Concerns,” won the third annual Payton Prize and was published by The Rumpus.
Joshua Valentine (BA English '16) will be starting a Masters of Library Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Andre Vriesman (BA English '01) is a Senior Copywriter for the Wexley School for Girls, which is actually not a school, but a marketing and advertising agency in Seattle, WA.
Jaclyn Watterson’s (MFA '10) short story collection, Ventriloquism, won the 2016 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, and is forthcoming from Willow Springs Books/Eastern Washington University.