By Jesi Jones-Bowman

UK undergraduate researchers Bridget Bolt and Gretchen Ruschman. Students are encouraged to explore undergraduate research opportunities at the Research + Creative Experience Expo.

At the University of Kentucky, undergraduates have access to outstanding research and creative work activities led by world-class faculty and staff that promote self-discovery, experiential learning and lifelong achievement.

Explore exciting undergraduate opportunities at the first annual UK Research + Creative Experience Expo 3-5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13, around the Gatton Student Center’s Social Staircase.

“The goal of the Research + Creative Experience Expo is to introduce undergraduates to the diversity of research and creative work conducted at UK,” said Chad Risko, faculty director of the

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 6, 2021) — Before you know it, summer will be coming to a close. But there’s still time to get lost in a good book.

We asked the University of Kentucky community to recommend books they feel would make good additions to anyone’s summer reading list.

In the descriptions below, faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences share the books they can’t put down. Pulling from the worlds of history and fiction — their picks explore timely themes while providing intriguing insights.

“A Time of Gifts” by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Recommended by Phil Harling, chair of the Department of History in

Note: Photo is courtesy of Katie Kelley of the Hazard Herald. Photo shows Gurney Norman with Mandi Fugate Sheffel.

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Gurney Norman received an unusual honor of late when a Kentucky town named an affordable-housing development after him. 

Norman, professor of English in the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts & Sciences, was named Poet Laureate for the Commonwealth of Kentucky 2009 and is known for such works as “Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories” and “Divine Right’s Trip: A Folk-Tale.” His most recent book, “Allegiance: Stories,” is due out in the summer of 2021 in hardcover from Old Cove Press, distributed by Ohio University Press. 

By Carl Nathe and Kody Kiser

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 11, 2021) — Four decades ago, Northern Ireland native Jonathan Allison earned an exchange scholarship to pursue graduate study in the United States.

His original plan was to earn a master’s degree then return to his homeland to resume his career of teaching literature and poetry to high school students. Instead he wound up earning a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and decided to become a college professor in America.

It became the good fortune of the University of Kentucky to hire Allison to join the faculty of the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1988. He’s been at UK ever since and currently serves as chair of this esteemed department.

Carl

Congrats to Prof. Crystal Wilkinson, and first year MFA in fiction, Chioma Ezeano, on winning the O. Henry Prize!

Crystal Wilkinson, associate professor, is the award-winning author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She will be next year's Kentucky Poety

By Kentucky Arts Council and Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky.  (March 29, 2021) — Multiple award-winning novelist Crystal Wilkinson has been appointed 2021-22 Kentucky Poet Laureate by Gov. Andy Beshear.

Wilkinson, an English professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky, will be inducted as part of the Kentucky Writers’ Day celebration. The virtual ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. on April 23 on the Kentucky Arts Council’s 

By Lindsey Piercy

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 6, 2021) — University Press of Kentucky author Crystal Wilkinson's novel, "The Birds of Opulence," has been selected by Kentucky Humanities for the 2021 Kentucky Reads.

The novel will be at the center of statewide conversations on the dynamics of family and community, the strength of women and stigmas surrounding mental illness. Kentucky Reads will offer 25 scholar-led discussions of “The Birds of Opulence” to community organizations throughout the Commonwealth.

“Mental illness continues to be one of our greatest societal ills and the stigma surrounding it is as concerning as the disease itself,” Wilkinson, an associate professor in the 

By Richard LeComte

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The College of Arts & Sciences has grabbed an opportunity to bring a scholar of post-colonial literature onto the faculty to expand the range of offerings to University of Kentucky students who want to find new ways of looking at fiction. 

Jap-Nanak K. Makkar is pursuing a two-year American Council of Learned Societies post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of English. At the end of the fellowship, her position will be moved to a tenure-track assistant professorship. 

“It’s almost two years ago now that the ACLS announced this post-doctoral partnership initiative grant designed to diversify departments in the humanities in higher education,” said Peter Kalliney, professor of English. "Departments