Emily Rapp joins UNM English as Russo Chair Professor

A former Fulbright scholar and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Emily Rapp is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir and Still Point of the Turning World.  Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, and Salon, among other publications.  She is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, a James Michener Fellowship at the University of Texas-Austin, and the Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing at Bucknell University.  A professor of creative writing and literature at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and a faculty member in the University of California-Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program, she joins UNM’s creative writing faculty as the Joseph M. Russo Visiting Professor in Creative Nonfiction.

Rananim program, the Online Writing Community of the Taos Summer Writers' Conference

The UNM Taos Summer Writers' Conference began sixteen years ago to create a link between UNM and the D.H. Lawrence Ranch just outside of beautiful Taos, NM. For years, the Conference has taken participants to the Ranch, had fellows stay in the fellowship cabin, and created that thing that Lawrence so desired: a utopian society where writers and artists of all kinds can go to create and commune.
This summer at the Conference, a new program called Rananim was created. The proceeds of Rananim, an Online Writing Community of the Taos Summer Writers' Conference, will go toward the renovation of the D. H. Lawrence Ranch. For more information about the new Rananim program, go to the website at http://www.unm.edu/~taosconf/ or watch the video that describes the ranch and the project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlKpSRK08S8.
The Rananim website includes a blog with posts about the Ranch. Here's the link:
http://rananim.unm.edu/blog

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!

Kathleen Washburn awarded a Smith College Travel-to-Collections Grant

Professor Kathleen Washburn was awarded a Travel-to-Collections grant from the Smith College Archives Research Support Program. The award funded archival research in the Sophia Smith Collection on writer and editor Elaine Goodale Eastman, who is best known for collaborating with husband Charles Eastman on a series of nonfiction texts on "Indian" life.

AISB Outstanding Student Award in English

New UNM student Bobbie Thomas (Navajo) was honored with the Outstanding Student Award in English for the 2014 American Indian Summer Bridge (AISB) Program. Through the intensive summer program sponsored by American Indian Student Services, recent high school graduates earn credit in Native American Studies, math, and English courses and prepare for college success. The writing workshop course this summer was taught by Dr. Kathleen Washburn and Ph.D. student Julie Williams.

Todd Ruecker Publishes Article in TESOL Quarterly

Todd Ruecker published a short article, "Exploring the Linguistic and Institutional Contexts of Writing Instruction in TESOL,” in the June 2014 issue of TESOL Quarterly, the top journal in the field of TESOL.  He co-authored this piece with Shawna Shapiro from Middlebury College, Erik N. Johnson from Arizona State University, and Christine M. Tardy from the University of Arizona.  It is based on a globally distributed survey of 456 TESOL members about the way writing is shaped by their particular teaching context.

N. Scott Momaday to teach at UNM in Fall 2014

The English Department is very pleased to announce that a premier writer of our time N. Scott Momaday will be a Visiting Professor in our Creative Writing and American Literary Studies Programs during the 2014-15 academic year. Specializing in poetry and the Native oral tradition, in fall 2014 he will teach 487/587 The Native American Oral Tradition.

He received the National Medal of Arts in November 2007 ‘for his writings and his work that celebrate and preserve Native American art and oral tradition.’  In addition to the National Medal of Arts, he has received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his first novel, House Made of Dawn, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, the Premio Letterario Internazionale “Mondello”, Italy’s highest literary award, The Saint Louis Literary Award, the Premio Fronterizo, the highest award of the Border Book Festival, the 2008 Oklahoma Humanities Award, and the 2003 Autry Center for the American West Humanities Award.  UNESCO named him an Artist for Peace in 2003, the first American to be so honored since the United States rejoined UNESCO.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities including Yale University, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa in his home state of Oklahoma, Blaise Pascal University (France) and his alma mater, the University of New Mexico.

A member of the Kiowa Nation, Momaday has written the following books: The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (Oxford University Press), House Made of Dawn (Harper and Row), The Way to Rainy Mountain (University of New Mexico Press), Angle of Geese (David R. Godine), The Gourd Dancer (Harper and Row), The Names (Harper and Row), The Ancient Child (Doubleday), In the Presence of the Sun (St. Martin’s Press), The Man Made of Words (St. Martin’s Press), In the Bear’s House (St. Martin’s Press), Circle of Wonder:  A Native American Christmas Story (University of New Mexico Press), Les Enfants du Soleil (Le Seuil, Paris), and Four Arrows and Magpie (Hawk Publ. Group).