Catching Up with Summer News

Now that we’re back from summer break, we’d like to congratulate a few of our alumni and faculty on their summer accomplishments:

In faculty news, please join the English Department in congratulating Prof. Hugh Ingrasci on the publication of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, a collection of critical essays that he co-edited with the late Michael J. Meyer for Rodopi Press.  Prof. Ingrasci helped select the essays and contributed a lengthy introduction for the volume.  After Meyer’s death in 2011 , the publisher asked Ingrasci to sign on as editor and finish the book.  As he describes it, the publication of the collection is a “bittersweet feat.”  The book is on display in the English Department’s publications case on the third floor of Arts & Letters Hall near the main staircase.

In alumni news, congratulations to Bryan Kett (MAWP ’12), who got a position as an Associate Writer/Editorial Assistant with GA Communication Group in downtown Chicago. Concerning this new position, Bryan says, “It not only feels great to be employed, but to also be writing.”

Congratulations also to Zhanna Vaynberg (MAWP ’12), who is having a short story published in Bellevue Literary Journal. Zhanna’s story, called “Things You Should Never Tell Your Mother” will be featured in the upcoming September issue.

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If you’re looking for a literary event to attend tomorrow evening, Printers Row Live! is offering students free tickets to their Friday night reading and interview with Juila Keller. On Sept. 7th at 7:00 p.m., Tribune literary editor Elizabeth Taylor will interview former Tribune culture critic and Pulitzer Prize recipient Julia Keller at the Tribune Tower.  They will discuss Keller’s new mystery novel, A Killing in the Hills. To receive the discount, students can use the discount code STUDENT15 on the ticketing site to claim their free ticket. chicagotribune.com/news/tribnation/events/chi-sept-7-printers-row-live-julia-keller.

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Silver Birch Press invites all new and emerging writers to submit your work to its upcoming Silver Anthology, which will be edited by Joan Jobe Smith & Melanie Villines. Details are as follows:

GUIDELINES & DEADLINE

THEME: SILVER – all contributions need to touch on the theme in some way. Submissions can be new or previously published work (if you hold reprint rights).

TYPE OF MATERIAL:

  •         Poems (up to three)
  •         Short stories (up to 2,000 words)
  •         Novel excerpts (up to 2,000 words)
  •         Essays (up to 1,500 words)
  •         Creative nonfiction (up to 2,000 words)
  •         Short plays or screenplays (performance pieces up to 10 minutes in length)
  •         Other literary forms you can envision (up to 2,000 words)

DEADLINE: October 15th, 2012 (We want to publish the book in time for Christmas!)

PAYMENT: As payment, each contributor will receive one (1) copy of the anthology (not sure of its length at the moment – but it could reach 250 pages) – and can purchase additional copies at our cost (no markup by SBP). Contributors will retain all rights to their work – and grant Silver Birch Press one-time use of the material.

WHY SILVER? The publisher is Silver Birch Press, so silver seems an obvious choice. But the selection really goes deeper than that. We like this theme because it’s rich, varied, and offers a wide range of possibilities – from second-place finishes, to eating utensils, 25th wedding anniversaries, hair color, swirling fog, coins, bells, jewelry, the tin man, space suits, car bumpers, airplanes, family heirlooms, and on and on. Let silver spark your imagination.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Please email your entry as a MSWord document or a PDF attachment to silverbirchpress@yahoo.com.

NOMINATIONS: If you’d like to nominate a colleague for the anthology, please send an email to silverbirchpress@yahoo.com.

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And finally, please see the following three Calls for Papers from three very different conferences with rapidly approaching deadlines:

Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies
2013 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference Call for Papers

Deadline: Monday, October 15, 2012
Conference dates: January 24-26, 2013

The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies invites abstracts for fifteen-minute papers from master’s or PhD students, on any medieval, Renaissance, or early modern topic in Europe or the Mediterranean or Atlantic worlds. We encourage submissions from disciplines as varied as the literature of any language, history, classics, anthropology, art history, music, comparative literature, theater arts, philosophy, political science, religious studies, transatlantic studies, disability studies, and manuscript studies.

Eligibility: Proposals are accepted only from students at member institutions of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium, who may be eligible to apply for reimbursement for travel expenses to attend.

Submissions are accepted online only at newberry.org/01242013-2013-multidisciplinary-graduate-student-conference.

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Nineteenth Century Studies Association
34th Annual Conference
Fresno, California  March 7-9, 2013
Graduate Forum Call for Papers

Building on the Nineteenth Century Studies Association’s 2013 conference theme of Loco/Motion, graduate students are invited to submit proposals about the medium of pilgrimage in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914) to a graduate student forum session.  From religious travels to personal journeys (actual and imagined), this panel seeks abstracts that will address the role of the pilgrim as traveler in the nineteenth century, whether in America or abroad.

Abstracts of 250 words (including the author’s name, paper title, and institutional affiliation) should be sent with a one page CV by email to Emily Bailey at ejb43@pitt.edu no later than September 14, 2012.

Presenters will be notified of their acceptance in November 2012.

For further details about the NCSA 2013 conference, please visit: nineteenthcenturystudiesassociation.org/uploads/9/7/7/9/9779672/ncsa_cfp_flyer.pdf.

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The Writing by Degrees Conference 2012, which we posted about last spring, has announced an Extended Submissions Deadline. Writing by Degrees is now in its 13th year at Binghamton University in NY, and is one of the few conferences that is for graduate students with graduate-only panel presenters. The deadline has now been extended to September 10th so please submit a creative or academic panel proposal to writingbydegrees2012@gmail.com.

Writing by Degrees invites exciting and high quality submissions by graduate students for creative readings and academic panels.  Poets, prose writers, essayists, and critics from all theoretic and aesthetic backgrounds are welcome.  Possible academic topics include creative writing pedagogy, craft across the genres, critical theory and creative work, the role of writing in the political world, and the creative writing job market. The conference’s two keynote speakers are MAWP Professor Christine Sneed and poet Marie Howe.

For more information on how to submit a proposal, please visit writingbydegrees.binghamton.edu/papers.