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Find out the latest accomplishments from alumni, students, and staff! This who DePaul is most excited about!

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT! Get to know MAWP candidate: Savy Leiser! 1. What program are you in, and how did you choose DePaul? I am in the MAWP program! MAWP is the only program I’ve found that combines all of my passions: creative writing, editing, teaching, and journalism. It was also important to go to a school where I could be a graduate assistant, since I couldn’t afford to pay tuition or take on more loans at this time. My assistantship at the writing center has been amazing, and makes me even more grateful to be a… Read Article →

June 2018 MAWP grad Cynthia Nwakudu is a finalist for the 2018 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award! The Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards (GBOMA) is an annual poetry competition founded by Pulitzer Prize winning Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000). The competition culminates in a live semi-finals event at which the top contestants selected by guest judges perform their original poems in live competition for a $500 prize awarded by the audience. To support Cynthia, don’t miss out on the GBOMA competition: September 18th, 2018 The Promontory 5311 S. Lake Park Avenue West Hyde Park, Chicago Doors open… Read Article →

Here are some of our MAE and MAWP students that are soon to graduate or have already graduated! To receive a student spotlight, please send your information to the Ex-Libris editor, Camila Restrepo crestre4@depaul.edu. Courtney Aubrecht will be graduating this summer with her MAWP degree! After graduation she plans to focus more on writing and to get published in magazines but after graduation she intends to turn her attention back on the creation of stories, either in visual formats or in the written word. Another goal of hers is to extend her education to others, either through literacy… Read Article →

Good news from Kathleen Rooney, who reports that: “Rose Metal Press’s latest book, MONSTER PORTRAITS, has just been reviewed in the NY Times Book Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/books/review/new-science-fiction-fantasy.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbook-review&action=click&contentCollection=review&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront   “We’ve been around since 2006, and we are regularly reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, etc but this is our first time–in 12 years!– in the NYTBR.” Congrats, Kathleen! The Department is proud of you!

Thanks to everyone who made it out to last night’s Big Shoulders Books Write Your Heart Out launch party! For those interested, here is the link to today’s coverage of the book! http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-teen-relationship-anthology-kogan-sidewalks-0206-story.html

Congrats to Bethany Brownholtz, MAWP graduate! MAWP alumna (’13) Bethany Brownholtz will have excerpts of her thesis published in The Same but Different: Variantivity in Cognitive Linguistics to be published by the Peter Lang Publishing Group. Dr. Aleksandra Majdzińska in the Department of English and General Linguistics at the University of Łódź, Poland recently contacted Brownholtz about being included in the book. Brownholtz’s thesis, Exercises in Style: 21st Century Remix, is an extension of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, first published in French in 1947. In Queneau’s book, the same two-paragraph passage (Notation) is written… Read Article →

Congratulations to Kathleen Rooney, whose novel, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, is a finalist for the Chicago Writers Association’s 2017 Book of the Year! Kathleen teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University and is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Congrats, Kathleen, you make the department proud! A synopsis of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk: It’s the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk. As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega… Read Article →

The English Department received wonderful news that alumnus Thom Kudla’s latest book, HOW I AM DIFFERENT, was named a finalist in the Poetry Category of the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards! The ebook version won multiple medals in the 2017 Global Ebook Awards. HOW WE ARE DIFFERENT (HWAD), an Apple app based on that book, was recognized by the Independent Book Publishers Association as a Benjamin Franklin Digital Award Silver Honoree. To download the app, visit this site: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hwad/id1220860133?mt=8. Thom’s books of poetry COMMENCEMENT and OUT OF CONTEXT won the 2017 IndieReader Discovery Award for… Read Article →

As final grades roll-in, Ex Libris wants to offer its congratulations to all English graduate students for their hard work this year! Kudos, you make this department great. Also, deserving recognition as the year closes is Bill Johnson-Gonzalez who earned a well deserved tenure track position this year. Superb! And a nod to adjunct faculty member Jeff Kessler for defending his thesis project on the imaginary portrait in late 19th century Britain at Indiana University.  Nice work Jeff! But, most importantly, Ex Libris would like to give a huge round of applause to this year’s… Read Article →

Voting is open for the Chicago Reader’s annual Best of Chicago awards and DePaul’s own Kathleen Rooney has been nominated for the category of Best Novelist! Kathleen has been making waves and garnering well deserved accolades with her new novel, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. An urban love-letter and deftly crafted portrait of a powerful woman, Lillian Boxfish has been called, “prescient and quick….a perfect fusing of subject and writer, idea and ideal” by the Tribune. Along with Kathleen, DePaul English Department alumni Alison Ogunmokun has been nominated for best poet. Congrats! To vote for Kathleen and Allison –… Read Article →

Congratulations to MAE Mihaela Stoica who will be presenting a paper on ambivalent masculinity in James Tiptree, Jr’s novella “Huston, Houston, Do You Read?” at the 2017 Science Fiction Research Association annual conference. The five day conference hosted by the University of California at Riverside takes place from June 27 to July 1 with the theme “Unknown Pasts/Unseen Futures.” Find a full schedule of presenters is available here. Great work and good luck Mihaela!

As the quarter inches closer to summer break, Ex Libris would like to update folks on a few awesome accomplishments from the last few weeks. First, a kudos to Dave Welch who will be spending part of his summer at the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and will have his tuition paid as their Tennessee Williams Scholar. Great work Dave! Next, two professors in the department are recent gran winners! Rebecca Johns Trissler was awarded a  Quality of Instruction Council (QIC) Competitive Instructional Grant, and Paula McQuade was awarded a University Research Council (URC) Competitive Research Grant. Y’all… Read Article →

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