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About the English Department / Department Leadership

Department Leadership

Sarah Lyon

Sarah Lyon
Acting Chair of English

An Anthropologist by training, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement, Sarah Lyon, currently serves as the Acting Chair of English.  

Crystal Wilkinson

Crystal Wilkinson
Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor
Director of Creative Writing Division

Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence and other acclaimed novels. A former Kentucky Poet Laureate, she is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, and a USA Artists Fellowship. Raised in Kentucky, Wilkinson is an affiliate of the Appalachian Studies and African American and Africana Studies Programs

Andy Doolen

Andy Doolen
Director of Literature Division

Professor Andy Doolen is the author of the forthcoming book White Indian: The Life and Assassination of John Dunn Hunter as well as Territories of Empire: U.S. Writing from the Louisiana Purchase to Mexican Independence and Fugitive Empire: Locating Early American Imperialism. Prior to serving as Director of the Literature Division, Doolen directed the U.S. Cultures and Business Practices major, the Committee on Social Theory, and Graduate Studies in the Department of English. He is a scholar of literature and 18th and 19th century cultures of U.S. empire and settler colonialism.

Matthew Giancarlo

Matthew Giancarlo
Director of Graduate Studies, Literature and Film
 

Andrew Milward

Andrew Milward
Director of Creative Writing MFA 
 

Matthew Godbey

Matthew Godbey
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Literature and Film
 

Shauna M. Morgan

Shauna M. Morgan
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Creative Writing