The Creative Writing Program has a graduating MFA class of 7 students: Isabel Acevedo, Roe Sellers, Ernestine Montoya, Abbie Marie Lahmers, Noah Devros, Ryan Loveeachother, and Kristie Johnson. These students' achievements included over thirty publications between them during the past three years. Noah Devros is bound for the Ph.D. program at the University of Southern Mississippi. Kristie Johnson has secured a full-time college teaching job in Augusta. Abbie Lahmers will be moving to Boston to work in publishing.
Caroline Olesen was named outstanding English Major for the undergraduate creative writing concentration; she will return to Denmark and then apply to graduate programs at Stanford and Cambridge. Michael "Ross" Cudmore was accepted to three M.A. programs in English and will study in the M.A. program at Georgia College. Dakota Wellmaker will move to Atlanta and work and travel. Vaness Mellroy will attend graduate school at Radford University. Phillip Smith will become a leadership consultant for Alpha Tau Omega in Indianapolis. Jessica Douglas will pursue her MFA in Scriptwriting at UGA or SCAD. Analyn McVay will work at Andalusia this summer and apply to graduate programs. Brittney Schwind will work on staff at GCSU. Constance Cummings will travel to Morocco for an internship. Lauren Seymour will move to the west coast to work. Austin Morris will be a middle school teacher in Wheeler County. The Creative Writing Program was very grateful for this spring's Margaret Harvin Wilson Writing Awards that went to eight undergraduates in two categories: juniors and seniors, and sophomores and first year students.
Dr. Kerry Neville was awarded a Fulbright this past fall; she'll be teaching in Ireland in fall, 2018. Professor Laura Newbern will also be on leave in fall, 2018, working on a poetry manuscript. Dr. Allen Gee will say a fond farewell to Georgia College after fourteen years; he’ll become the Donald L. Jordan Endowed Professor of Creative Writing at Columbus State University. Dr. Martin Lammon was recently named Professor Emeritus, and the creative writing program has enjoyed celebrating his career and his numerous accomplishments. The future of creative writing at Georgia College is very bright; we have almost completed acceptances for the next fall's entering graduate class, and we have been greeting many prospective undergraduate English majors.
The Literature Program has had a great semester. In terms of organizations, Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society, received a 35-year plaque. Brittany Barron, MFA graduate student and Teaching Fellow, received a Graduate Research Grant to represent our chapter of Sigma Tau Delta at the national convention in Cincinnati in March where she read her poetry and accepted our 35-Year chapter plaque. Brittany is now the U.S. Southern Region's Associate Student Representative for Sigma Tau Delta. Literary Guild and the social media interns are incorporating Literary Guild activities into a regular segment on a fall 2018 podcast they are developing for the department. The group plans to talk about one book a month and take book and discussion question from social media and then having an on-air discussion with the other hosts and any potential enthusiastic supports who would like to be guests on the podcast and participate in the discussion that way. Look for interviews with Dr. Martin Lammon and Dr. Kerry Neville when the podcast premieres in the fall and replaces the Black Market Radio Show. Shakespearean Circle, which read Coriolanus, Pericles, and Hamlet this semester, is joined by a new literature and film group. The Romanticism Reading Group viewed Love & Friendship, a 2016 film based on Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan, and Young Frankenstein, a 1974 parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
On the student and faculty side of the program, Samantha "Sami" Strickland was named Outstanding English Major for the literature concentration; President of Sigma Tau Delta and an Honors student, Sami has earned a MURACE Summer Research Grant, presented at the the Student Research Conference, and presented twice at the Southeast COPLAC conference, this year for "Gender Insecurity: The Performance and Passing of Lily Bart in Edith Wharton's House of Mirth." Graduating senior Matthew Cornelison, who is a paramedic and has been accepted to the Medical College of Georgia, was featured in a FrontPage article about his passions of literature and medicine. Many literature students shared the results of their research in many forums this semester. Literature majors Dana Maller, Elise O'Neal, and Sami Strickland, and MA graduate students Emily Allmond and Destiny Cornelison presented at the Student Research Conference. Literature majors Cassandra Alligood, Sophia DiCarlo, Olivia Martin, and Sami Strickland, and MA graduate students Michael Faulkner, Mikaela LaFave, Lindsey Poe, and Sarah Rogers presented at the Women's and Gender Studies Symposium. Calabria Turner earned an Honorable Mention at the 1st Annual Graduate Research Poster Exhibit and Competition. Finally, our faculty were honored to give a keynote address and present at the MLA Convention. Dr. Eustace Palmer gave the keynote address at the University System of Georgia's Africa Council lecture series, and Dr. Katie Simon presented "Haunting Affect in Fuller and Thoreau" at the MLA Annual Convention.
Flaherty, Jennifer. "How Many Daughters Had Lady Macbeth?" Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction, edited by Andrew James Hartley, Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 101-114.
Friman, Alice. [Retired] "In Praise of Wandering." [Poem] Plume, vol. 77, Dec. 2017. http://plumepoetry.com/2017/12/in-praise-of-wandering/
---. "Inseparable." [Poem] Juxtaprose, vol. 13, Fall 2017.
http://www.juxtaprosemagazine.org/inseparable-by-alice-friman/
---. "Judith." [Poem] The Gettysburg Review, vol. 30, no. 4, Winter 2017, pp. 546-47.
---. "On This May Morning" and "The Descent." [Poems] The American Journal of Poetry, vol. 4, 2018. http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/v4-
friman.html
---. "Playing Favorites," "Asking Forgiveness," and "In an August Mirror." [Poems]
Poetry East, vol. 91-92, Autumn 2017, pp. 242-45.
---. "Poetry Advice 101." [Essay] Book Mark: How to Be an Author, edited by Chip R. Bell, Georgia Writers Museum, 2018, pp. 95-99. [Includes rpt. of the poem "Night Drive."]
Neville, Kerry. Review of Black Dove, by Ana Castillo. Mom Egg Review, 13 Apr. 2018. http://momeggreview.com/2018/03/13/black-dove-by-ana-castillo/
---. "Playing Kong." Gulf Coast Journal, Winter 2018. https://gulfcoastmag.org/online/winter/spring-2018/playing-kong/
---. "Voice Lessons." Ravishly, 13 Feb. 2018. https://ravishly.com/why-i-speak-without-raising-my-hand
---. "Only the Lonely." The Fix, 13 Mar. 2018. https://www.thefix.com/only-lonely
---. "An Interview with Kerry Neville." Necessary Fiction, 6 Mar. 2018. http://necessaryfiction.com/blog/AnInterviewWithKerryNeville
Selgin, Peter. Your First Page Critique. Jane Friedman. https://www.janefriedman.com/author/peter-selgin/ [Column in conjunction with Selgin's recent book Your First Page and published on the author Jane Friedman's website]
Allmond, Emily. [MA Student] "Helga Crane: A Modern Woman, Resistance is NOT Futile." Student Research Conference, Georgia College and State University, 9 Mar. 2018, Milledgeville, GA. Conference Presentation.
Blazer, Alex. "Legion: The Traumatic Encounter between Fantasy and Reality in Noah Hawley's Superhero Drama." Southeast Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures, 6 Apr. 2018, Coastal Georgia Center, Savannah, GA. Conference Presentation.
Bowlin, Catherine. [MA graduate] "Place, Self, and Time in S-Town: An Ecocritical Approach to the Investigative Journalism Podcast." Society for the Study of Southern Literature, 17 Feb. 2018, University of Texas, Austin, TX. Conference Presentation.
Callender, Craig. "Perception and the Phoneme." Categories and Units in Language and Linguistics, Apr. 2018. Wałbrzych, Poland. Conference Presentation.
Flaherty, Jennifer. "Taming the Internet: Katherine, Bianca, and Digital Girlhood." The Taming of the Shrew and Its Afterlife. Shakespeare Association of America, 29 Mar. 2018, Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, CA. Conference Presentation.
Friman, Alice. [Retired] Holocaust Memorial Reading. Vero Beach, FL. 12 Apr.
2018. Reading.
---. Poetry Workshop for Laura Riding Jackson Foundation. Vero Beach, FL. 14 Apr. 2018. Workshop.
LaFave, Mikaela. "'Lost in the Bitterness' of a Man's World: Representations of Henry VIII's Masculinity." Exploring Gender. Comparative Drama Conference, 7 Apr. 2018, Downtown Orlando Doubletree Hotel, Orlando, FL. Conference Presentation.
---. "'Something Rotten' This Way Comes: Rotten Space, Natural Space, and Feminism in Hamlet. Georgia College Graduate School, 23 Apr. 2018, Ina Dillard Russell Library, Milledgeville, GA. Poster Presentation.
Lammon, Martin. "Writing Race, Class, and Gender in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry." Panel Presentation with Patricia Bell-Scott (UGA-Emeritus), Valerie Boyd (UGA), Anthony Grooms (Kennesaw State University). Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, 10 Mar. 2018, Tampa Convention Center & Marriott Tampa Waterside, Tampa, FL. Conference Panel.
Neville, Kerry. Invited Speaker. GCSU/Hub, Sexual Violence Awareness Month, 18 Apr. 2018, Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA. Address.
---. Writer-in-Residence. Slippery Rock University Writer's Festival, Apr. 4, 2018, Slippery Rock, PA. Address.
---. Invited Speaker. Women's and Gender Studies Symposium, 28 Mar. 2018, Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA. Address.
---. TriQuarterly Journal Off-Site Reading. Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, 9 Mar. 2018, Tampa Convention Center & Marriott Tampa Waterside, Tampa, FL. Reading.
---. Poison Pen Reading Series. 25 Jan. 2018, Houston, TX. Reading.
---. Writing as Transformation Workshop, Angel's Flight West, 14 Jan. 2018. Los Angeles, CA. Address.
---. Women Resist: Angel's Flight West Reading Series, 13 Jan. Los Angeles, CA. Reading.
Palmer, Eustace. "Modern African Literature: Culture and Identity." The University System Africa Council's Africa Lecture Series, 8 Mar. 2018, Middle Georgia State University, Macon, GA. Keynote Address.
Simon, Katie. "Haunting Affect in Fuller and Thoreau." Margaret Fuller: New Critical Approaches. MLA Annual Convention, 6 Jan. 2018, New York Hilton Midtown, New York, NY. Conference Presentation.
---. "Disaster Tourism: Racialized Violence in Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes." Changing Climes: Geography, Mobility, and Racial Justice in Antebellum Traveling Narratives. C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Biennial Conference, 24 Mar. 2018, Hyatt Regency, Albuquerque, NM. Conference Presentation.
Dr. Jennifer Flaherty assisted Theatre Macon with their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by serving as their Shakespeare consultant.
Dr. Kerry Neville has been awarded a fellowship, the Artist's Residency Award at Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland, May 2018.