MFA Alumna Bonnie Arning's Book Accepted for Publication

Bonnie Arning's The Black Acres has been accepted for publication in The Center for Literary Publishing's Mountain West Poetry Series, and it will come out in June of 2016​. This book was her dissertation, which she defended in the spring of 2013.

Poets Publishing MFA Dissertations

Nick dePascal, who graduated with an MFA in 2013 and is currently a lecturer in our department, won the first West End Press Poetry Prize.  His book, Before You Become Improbable, is now out from West End Press. Congratulations to Nick!

In addition, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, also a 2013 poetry MFA graduate, has had her manuscript, The Verging Cities, accepted by the Center for Literary Publishing through their Mountain West Poetry Series.​ Congratulations Natalie!

Alumnus Diane Schmidt Wins Writing Award

Diane Schmidt got her MA in Creative Writing from UNM, in Spring 2002. Her MA Thesis was The Collected Works of Earnestine Thebad.

Attached is an article from the Gallup Independent, June 24, 2014.

"Freelance writer wins national award for enterprise reporting"
By Kyle Chancellor, News intern

GALLUP - An Independent columnist exposed a con man working in New Mexico and won a top award from The National Federation of Press Women.

Diane Schmidt won the first place award for enterprise reporting from The National Federation of Press Women for her articles "Who you gonna call, Ghostbusters?" and "Con man who posed as Native fooled merchants, media" which both ran in the Independent.

The first of the two stories appeared in the Independent on April 20, 2013, as the spiritual perspectives column after Schmidt received an irate call from a Native community member. The individual stated that David Rendon, at the time known as David RedFeather, who had recently been featured in the Navajo Times as a Native American healer, promoter, and savior for the merchants of the Old Town business district and who had recently been elected president of the Old Town Merchants Association, was in fact not who he was claiming to be.

The individual claimed that RedFeather was not a Lakola healer as he was claiming and also had an extensive criminal record including a civil complaint in Ramah from 1998 where Rendon was accused of failure to pay rent. The first story didn't name Rendon explicitly because Schmidt could not get absolute confirmation to match the man to the police records.

Through further investigation, Schmidt uncovered an extensive criminal past for Rendon in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico and finally confirmed that it was indeed the same David Rendon. Schmidt reported that the man had conned around $50,000 from people that believed he was a successful businessman, healer, roadman and mystic. What he really was, was a crook, who would prey upon peoples vulnerabilities, taking their hard earned money and bouncing out of town before the boys in blue could catch up to him. The second of the two stories ran on the front page of the Independent on Aug. 21, 2013.

Schmidt submitted the stories to the New Mexico Press Women, where they won first place in enterprise reporting and advanced to the National Federation of Press Women where it also won first place for the same category. The judges commented on the story by saying the stories were a "Great example of enterprise reporting with impact for the community."

Diane says, "The story was a lot of work and cost ten times more time and money than I would ever get paid, as this sort of work always does, so this was sort of my 'reward.'

"The real payback was a call I got some months later from a gal who was helping Rendon where he had resurfaced in the Carolinas, and saw my stories online about him and I was able to advise her to contact the police there instead of her trying to 'save' him."

Evee Ung begins her bright future at Georgetown University in Fall

Evee Ung has received an impressive offer from Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Teaching and Scholarship that includes full tuition remission and a stipend.

Erin Penner Gallegos Extending Peace Corps Service

Erin Penner Gallegos defended her MA R&W Portfolio in May 2011 and took an appointment with the Peace Corps. She is now back in the US before going back overseas and taking her next promotion appointment in Thailand.

Erin will be here for the Writing the World Symposium on Friday. Another Professional Writing MA success story for our placement records. Erin launched the first WAC Earth Day Symposium which evolved into the Wriitng the World Symposium.  She didn't just theorize about "writing the world"--she's living it.

They will extend Peace Corps service by one year (to start in May, after coming home for a month-long visit). Then back to Thailand, but a new city, and working with the College of Local Administration (COLA) at Khon Kaen University, in Khon Kaen City. Most of the time will be working with the "Youth Anti-Corruption Network" which is a project started at Khon Kaen University through COLA about two years ago with funds from the UN Development Programme. The students who go to COLA will for the most part become government administrators at the local (town / county) level.

Greg Evans Haley the new Strategic Communications Director for ACT Foundation

Greg Evans Haley has landed his dream job in Austin TX as the Strategic Communications Director for the ACT Foundation (a Bill and Melinda Gates Foudation). This is a brilliant placement and exciting news for our Professional Writing Program.

Greg's search committee was very impressed with Greg's work in rhetoric (hermeneutics of John Dewey especially) and Greg's grassroots experience working with Writing Across Communities here at UNM. In Greg's words,

I have accepted a position as Director, Strategic Communications for the ACT Foundation. The foundation was established as a public trust non-profit organization in October, 2013 with the mandate to establish a national learning economy to benefit working learners. The goal is to develop a nationally recognized certification program that allows working learners to gain mobility across industries and across companies based on their skills and training learned on the job. The foundation is working to build a network of industry associations, education, and worker training programs to collaborate in this effort. This economic plan is currently in design and development phase with organizations from all across the country, and across the political spectrum, joining in the effort. The ACT Foundation's role is to develop the strategy, provide funding for innovative solutions, and provide leadership for this nationwide effort. 

As Director, Strategic Communications, Greg's role is to develop the national communications strategy, introduction, and ongoing development of the national learning economy. This involves working with key stakeholders from government, industry, and educational organizations to develop the key messaging, communications strategy, and overall outreach effort to help make this new economy a reality. This is a senior management position at the foundation that is also responsible for managing stakeholder relations, developing the overall framing and direction of the learning economy, and providing internal leadership for the foundation's employees.

Writer's Almanac Chooses UNM MFA Alumni Richard Vargas' Poem to Share

Richard Vargas is one of our MFA alumni, and we are very proud of his work.

As of right now, Writer's Almanac is kicking off National Poetry Month with a poem from my new book, Guernica, revisited. Scheduled for Tues., April 1.

In Albuquerque, the show airs on KANW, 89.1, usually around 8:15 am. This will be the third time Garrison Keillor has read my work on the air, an honor. Hope you give it a listen, and enjoy.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Richard Vargas
Poet/Editor/Publisher
http://www.richardvargaspoet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/#!/rvargas54
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Mas-Tequila-Review/112489092101207

why i feed the birds

by Richard Vargas

once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god

"why i feed the birds" by Richard Vargas from Guernica, revisited. © Press 53, 2014. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/04/01

The book launch for Richard's new book will be April 26 at the Peace and Justice Center.

Christopher Bartlett admitted to Boston University’s graduate program in Literary Studies

UNM English major Christopher Bartlett has been admitted to Boston University’s MA/PhD program in English and American Literature! Chris has received a full graduate fellowship from Boston University, and he will begin graduate study this fall. He is currently finishing an Undergraduate Honors Thesis in the English Department here at UNM, under the supervisions of Prof. Daniel Worden, titled “‘An Exercise in Telemachry’: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Intergenerational Conversation.”

Congratulation to Chris!

Emilee Howland-Davis into a Bright Future

Emilee Howland-Davis has been accepted into the English PhD program at the University of Missouri at Columbia with a full assistantship and two fellowships: the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Supplemental Graduate Fellowship, as well as the English Department Fellowship. Emilee will continue studying Arthurian Literature in the context of magic. We will miss you, Emilee, and wish you all the best. Dr. Obermeier

ALS at the MLA

It was another strong showing of American Literary Studies faculty and graduate students at the 2014 MLA in Chicago.

New doctoral student, Amy Gore, presented “Indigenizing the Gothic Novel: Harold Johnson’s Backtrack and Its Uncanny Conventions” at the Native Voices in Genre Fiction panel, and she also presided over a session on the American Indian Gothic. The Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures arranged both panels.

Oliver Baker, a second year doctoral student, presented “Dispossession and Instability: The Free Labor Market and Southern Anxieties in John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta” at the Native South panel organized by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Katie Walkiewicz, who earned her MA in English and UNM and is now completing her PhD at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was also on the panel.

Dr. Kathleen Washburn presented “After 1893: Writing Indigenous Chicago in the Early Twentieth Century” at the Native Literary Chicago panel arranged by the Division on American Indian Literatures.

Dr. Jesse Alemán served as a panelist on a round-table session titled “Rethinking Postbellum Literary History.” He also completed his three-year term on the Advisory Council of the American Literature Section and started his elected seat on the MLA’s Delegate Assembly.

Leigh Johnson returns to talk about the Academic Job Search this Friday, Dec. 6 at noon.

Please join us this Friday, December sixth, in the Frank Waters Room at Zimmerman library for Dr. Leigh Johnson's talk and roundtable discussion on navigating job searches in the Humanities. 

 Dr. Johnson received her PhD from UNM's English Department in May of 2011 and attained a tenure-track position at Marymount University in Virginia. Dr. Johnson is now sitting on a search committee that has received hundreds of applicants. She will bring her expertise and insight from both sides of the search process.

This talk will be  a part of Dr. Worden's English 500 Symposium. The symposium will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Dr. Johnson's talk and roundtable will go from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m, and EGSA will provide a light lunch. Please come support your colleagues as they present their original work and absorb the wisdom of a successful UNM alum!

English 500 Symposium -- Friday, Dec. 6, 2013 in Zimmerman Library

The English 500 Symposium

Friday, December 6th
Frank Waters Room, Zimmerman Library

9:00-10:20: PANEL I

Emily Frontiere (MA program, Medieval Studies)
“Costs, Costs, Costs and Nothing is Done”: Lawyers and Power in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

Emily Simons (MA program, Medieval Studies)
Blurred Lines: The Female and the Animal in Marie de France’s Lais

Bradley Tepper (MA program, Literature)
Thomas Hardy’s Use of Law in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

10:30-11:50: PANEL II

Margaux Brown (MA program, Literature)
From Christian Salvation to Literary Salvation: Jupiter Hammon’s “An Essay on Slavery”

Megan Malcom-Morgan (MA program, Literature)
An Echo in the Hollow: The Intrusion of Race in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Mariya Tseptsura (PhD program, Rhetoric & Writing)
The Return of Cold War Rhetoric: Mission Possible?

12-1: LUNCH BREAK

1:10-2:30: PANEL III

Leandra Binder (PhD program, BILS)
“Maddened Blood”: Nietzschean Animalism in Felix Salten’s Bambi

Kelly Hunnings (PhD program, BILS)
Seeking the Familiar in John Clare’s Middle Period Satire

Gerard Lavin (MA program, Medieval Studies)
Instrument of Revelation: Understanding “Pearl” as an Object of Religious Contemplation

2:40-4:30: PANEL IV

Diana Filar (MA program, Literature)
Windigo, Overheard Dreams, and the Direct Impact of Story: Vengeful Agency as Influenced by Ancestral Stories in Louise Erdrich’s Round House

Amy Gore (PhD program, ALS)
Indigenizing the Gothic Novel: Harold Johnson’s Backtrack and its Uncanny Conventions

Kathryn Manis (MA program, Art History)
Man and Superman: Reframing the “Man of Steel” in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Karra Shimabukuro (PhD program, BILS)
Grimm and La Llorona: Liminal Space or Appropriation?

Justin Brock speaks on "The Critical Voices From the Joyous Gard: the Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthure" Friday, Nov. 1, 12:00 noon

The Feminist Research Institute is proud to host the FRI Research Lecture Series:

"The Critical Voices From the Joyous Gard: the Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthure"

Justin Brock, PhD Student at the Univ. of Oregon and UNM Alumnus

Friday, November 1, 2013 from 12:00 - 1:00 PM

Mesa Vista 1104 (History Common Room)

http://femresin.unm.edu/events/2013/11/brock/

Justin, as many of you know, was the FRI Graduate Assistant last year and is returning to UNM for this special presentation after graduating with his MA in English with a focus on Medieval Studies.  We are thrilled to welcome him back and we invite you to join us for this event.  We look forward to learning a great deal from his discussion.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at femresin@unm.edu or visit us on the web at http://femresin.unm.edu.

Molly Beer, MFA alumni in CNF, has many triumphs

A newer, faster stronger version of Molly Beer's MFA manuscript, Nightswimming, was a finalist for this year's Graywolf Nonfiction Book Prize.  Her essay “Under the Fifth Sun” has been named the runner-up for this year’s Annie Dillard Prize in Creative Nonfiction by the Bellingham Review.   Her essay “Lifecycle of the Butterflies” is the winner of the Pinch Journal essay prize.  And her essay “Who Made This Grave,” originally published in Vela, is included in Best Women’s Travel Writing.  This is Molly’s second appearance in this prestigious end-of-year anthology.  Molly is currently teaching a writing course in eco-criticism at Scripps College. Bravo, Molly.

Anita Obermeier and Marisa Sikes Contribute to Oxford Guide

Anita Obermeier and Marisa Sikes contributed “Augustine’s Retractationes” to The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (Eds. Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, 3 vols., Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 1: 467-70). 

http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-guide-to-the-historical-reception-of-augustine-9780199299164?cc=&lang=en&q=augustine's%20reception&tab=description

Justin Brock and Annarose Fitzgerald Garner FRI Awards

Justin Brock (recent MA in Medieval Studies) received the 2013 Best Student Paper Prize from the Feminist Research Institute for his essay, "The Critical Voices from Joyous Gard: The Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur."
Annarose Fitzgerald, PhD candidate in Literature, competed successfully for an FRI Graduate Student Research Grant for her dissertation research on Modernist poet Mina Loy at Yale University's Beinecke Library.

New Publications from Alumni Melanie Unruh and Patricia O'Connor

Two alumni from the graduate program have had some good news recently.  Melanie Unruh’s essay in Post Road, “The Place Called Mother” was selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013.  And Patricia O’Connor’s* essay “Alchemy” was just published in the September 2013  issue of Brain, Child.
*{Patricia O'Connor MA, rather than the other one currently in the MA program}

What Can You Do With a Degree in English?

Scott Sanders is a former Chair of the English department, who gave this speech at Graduation Convocation, 2013, a speech pertinent to all English majors:

Thank you, Professor Houston. 

What a great pleasure it is to be back at this podium, here at Woodward Hall, and looking at you, the graduates of our department for this Academic Year, 2012-13. 

I’m sure you know the commonplace (and completely mistaken) assumption that anyone who majors in English can only become a teacher. Certainly teaching at any level is a high calling, an absolutely vital profession, and teaching English is centrally important in every curriculum at every level in every school in our country. 

But teaching most certainly is not the only profession your English degree has prepared you to enter.

More than 40 years ago the major professional organization for post-secondary English faculty, the Modern Language Association, began a focused study of what undergraduate English majors did with their degrees after graduation. 

Fewer than 25% ever taught at any level for any length of time over the several years of that study, which extended for more than two decades. That means 75% never taught, and neither were they unemployed.

The study confirmed that English majors have many skills, and that many different professions value those skills.

In my own experience over the past 30 years, I’ve talked with hundreds of managers, owners, and supervisors at dozens of businesses and organizations and corporations large and small in New Mexico, our neighboring states, and beyond.

For the most part, these are the people who mentored our interns in their workplaces, and, in many cases, also hired our graduates. You can see a snapshot, a slice, of the range of employment available to English majors by looking at the list of internship placements available today on our departmental web site.

One person I corresponded with at length was a senior manager for a large national corporation headquartered in Ohio. He told me his company actively sought English majors as the “most skilled” of the liberal arts graduates his company was seeking to recruit and hire more and more in recent years. It seems they were becoming disenchanted with business majors.

He wrote a one page document with a catchy title and sent it to me:

Why XYZ Company Hires and Promotes People with English Degrees

He listed six categories of skills, which were somewhat repetitive (the document needed editing at the sentence, paragraph, and headings levels, making his point about their need for English majors). His six categories really came down to three familiar core skills: communication skills (writing and speaking); research skills (the ability to find information); and critical thinking skills (the ability to assess the value of information for different users). Let’s consider these three skills a bit further.

Communication Skills

My correspondent wrote, “[English majors] are rarely intimidated by deadlines and the prospect of creating multiple documents.”

New hires in their the first 3-6 months at XYZ were routinely asked to write two to three 150 to 250 word abstracts of information they could find about new clients, and these one-to-three-paragraphs-long documents were due on rolling deadlines about every 1-2 weeks. All but the English majors found this amount of writing and the associated deadlines daunting. The English majors thought, “Hey, this is less work than I used to do years ago in English 101. No sweat.” Echoing Oliver Twist, I imagine that they all but said, “Please sir, may I write some more?”

Research Skills

My correspondent wrote, “[English majors] are organized and experienced in the methodology of retrievable storage activities that result in research and information compilation.”

Translation:  English majors know how to search more sites than just Google; they keep accurate records of the URLs they consult; and they know how to cut and paste. 

Supervisors reading the abstracts produced by English majors not only found the information they wanted, but they could follow the path taken by the writer, and then branch off of that path confidently on their own to find still more information of use. Good stuff, my contact told me.

Critical Thinking Skills

Again, my correspondent wrote, “[English majors] execute a disciplined approach to situation analysis while implementing a critical thinking approach to problem resolution.”  I suspect one has to have a business degree to write a sentence like that.

Translation: English majors actually thought about what information would be more important, more useful, for their supervisors, and they placed that information in more prominent positions in their abstracts. Finally, they offered explicit conclusions about the significance of that information, about how it might affect their employers’ future actions with their new clients. 

More good stuff, and very, very rare among new hires, my contact told me.

I’m here today to tell you that you made the right choice about your major a few years back, that you are on the right track, and that your study of English has prepared you for a wide range of meaningful professional careers.

You have the skills you need to succeed.

You have the will you need to succeed.

And, more important than any skill, you have been building something my corporate correspondent never directly addressed, although I see it everywhere in everything he praised about English majors.

You have a measure of character, of maturity, and of wisdom that, no matter how many years you may actually have now, is certainly beyond any norm associated with that number of years.

This is so because you have read widely and you have read well the stories that really matter, the stories that the writers of great literature have given to us, stories about lives and worlds real and imaginary that you have lived and inhabited and shared in the fullest sense in your own generative imaginations that you engaged in the act of reading.

Although it is not so easily recognized, and it is far too often taken for granted, reading is the one true foundation for all of those other skills.

From the time you were first read to, and then eventually began reading on your own, you started on a path that has led you to where we are today, in Woodward Hall, at your graduation.

You are more than ready, and, finally, it is time.

Go out there beyond the classrooms where you have done so well and make something great and good happen for yourself and all of us in the new worlds that, through your actions, you will create.

Congratulations to you all.

Linwood Orange, English: The Pre-Professional Major, 1972; 4^th edition 1986.

Nicolas Hundley's book, The Revolver in the Hive, has been published by Fordham University Press, and won the “editor’s prize”

Nicolas Hundley, a UNM English alumnus (B.A.,’01), studied literature and creative writing here. He is now Director of Communications at the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin.

This year, his book, The Revolver in the Hive, has been published by Fordham University Press. It won the “editor’s prize” as part of the Poets Out Loud competition, and is distributed by Oxford University Press:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/Poetry/American/?view=usa&ci=9780823250882

Genesea Carter to teach Rhetoric and Composition at University of Wisconsin

Genesea Carter will be taking a tenure track job at the University of Wisconsin-Stout where she will be teaching rhetoric and composition courses.