About the English Department / Department Success Stories

Department Success Stories

Graduate Student News

  • Kasimma (current MFA) had a review for her book, All Shades of Iberibe, and a short story, “Ezuga,” published in the 40th edition of African Literature Today. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847013316/alt-40/. 
  • B Bailey (current PhD) was interviewed for the Kentucky Kernel article, “A look into UK’s relationship with queer studies.” https://kykernel.com/89641/features/a-look-into-uks-relationship-with-q…
  • Jazmin Witherspoon (current MFA) is the graduate student winner of the 2023 King Library Press Broadside Contest. She will receive $100 and copies of her beautifully handprinted letterpress broadside created by artist Paul Holbrook. The judge, poet Makalani Bandele, says this about the winning poem: “Good poems either investigate the interior of things or are the culmination of the investigation of interiors. “In the Next Room” examines the inner workings of a play's production, while simultaneously examining reproductive healthcare in the past as well as the present.”
  • Emily Naser-Hall (current PhD) was recognized on the field prior to one of our home football games for the 2022 Outstanding Teaching Awards. She was a finalist for the 3MT competition. The 3MT challenges researchers to tell an appealing story to a non-specialist audience in three minutes or less. https://gradschool.uky.edu/uk-gradresearch-live
  • Henry Knollenberg (current MFA) published a flash fiction piece, “The Screamer,” in Bending Genres: https://bendinggenres.com/the-screamer/ . 
  • Joe Neary (Current PhD) has a book review, "The Letters of Memory in 'Cleave'," in The Chicago Review of Books. https://chireviewofbooks.com/2022/08/26/the-letters-of-memory-in-cleave/
  • Amanda Salmon (current PhD) has been appointed to the Popular Culture Association Graduate Student Advisory Board.
  • Carter Johnson (current PhD) has an article, “Beyond Melodrama: A Jungian Reevalaution of Steinbeck's East of Eden," in the Steinbeck Review, vol. 19, no. 1, 2022, p. 33-46. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/858220
  • Brandon West (current PhD) has accepted the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
  • Caitlin Coulter (current PhD) received the runner-up award for Best Early Career Researcher Paper at the International Crime Fiction Association conference in Bamberg, Germany.             
  • Kasimma (current MFA) published her debut short story collection, All Shades of Iberibe, Sandorf Passage. Her story, ‘Where One Falls Is Where Their God Pushed Them Down," (https://theotherfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Where-One-Fal…) was the finalist for the 2022 Gerald Kraak Short Story Prize (https://opencountrymag.com/the-2022-gerald-kraak-prize-for-writing-on-g…). See her other works here: https://kasimma.com. 
  • Jess Van Gilder (current PhD) will present "Metacognitive Disruptions in Wieland: The Dangers of Thinking in Crisis" at the 2021 Charles Brockden Brown Society Conference, Providence, RI October 2021.
  • Brandon West (current PhD) has a book, Revulsion, Repetition, and Revenge: The Problem of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Horror Cinema, forthcoming from Under contract with Vernon Press; and the article, “Murky Waters: Loch Ness and Herzogian Notions of Truth” forthcoming in The New Review of Film and Television.
  • Caitlin Coulter (current PhD) presented “Who Paved “These Mean Streets”: The Development of Hardboiled Fiction in Response to Melodramatic Detective Novels” on panel Anna Katharine Green and the American Detective Story at the Midwest Modern Language Association (originally November 2020, pushed to November 2021). 
  • Daria Goncharova (current PhD) has an article, “’Workers of the World, Unite!’ Huck, Jim, and the Cold War’s Racial Tensions,” forthcoming in Post45 Vs. The World: Global Perspectives on Literature and The Contemporary from Vernon Press.
  • Katie Kohls (current PhD) presented “Beyond the Single Story: Freshmen Researchers Exploring Institutional Histories in the Archives” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Digital Poster Presentations. April 2021. She co-published “Piloting an Oral History-Based CURE in a General Education Writing Course for First-Year Students” in Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, Winter 2020, Vol. 4, No. 2.
  • Jenn Murray (current PhD) presented “Mengele’s Twins, Ravensbruck’s Rabbits and the Myriad Abuses against Women during the Holocaust” at the Northeast Modern Language Association, Virtual Conference. March 13, 2021.
  • Emily Naser-Hall (current PhD) published “A Woman of Obvious Power: Witchcraft and the Case Against Marital Rape in 1980s America” in Screening #MeToo: Rape Culture in Hollywood, forthcoming from SUNY Press, 2021; and “We Ate Them To Destroy Them: Carnivores, Cannibals, and the Critique of Mass-Market Feminism in the Age of Consumption,” in Popular Culture Studies Journal, forthcoming 2021.
  • Shannon Branfield (PhD '22) presented a paper at the 47th annual Victorian Institutes Conference, and presented Midwest Conference for British Studies.
  • Shelby Roberts (current PhD) co-published “Piloting an Oral History-Based CURE in a General Education Writing Course for First-Year Students” in Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, Winter 2020, Vol. 4, No. 2.
  • Hannah Schultz (current PhD) presented “The Problem of the Infidel’s Fidelity: Eligibility for Conversion in The Renegado,” at the English Graduate Student Organization Spring Symposium: University of Kentucky. March 20, 2021.
  • Jess Van Gilder (current PhD) presented "How the Game of Self-Reflexive Fictionality in Post-Revolutionary America Loses Its Innocence in Today’s Era of Fake News and Fact Checks" on the Perspectives on Fictionality Panel at the 2021 ISSN Narrative Conference, Virtual May 2021; and "Navigating Narrative Battles: Pedagogical Challenges of 'The 1619 Project;" at the 2021 UKY EGSO Symposium, Lexington, KY.
  • Brandon West (current PhD) was selected to receive the UK Association of Emeriti Faculty Fellowship. His book, At the Edge of Existence: Liminality in Horror Cinema Since the 1970s, is forthcoming with McFarland. He will present “Murky Waters: Loch Ness and Herzogian Notions of Truth” at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA), Online, June 2021; and presented "Cultivating Paranoia: The Conspiracy as Political Tool” at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) Online, November 2020.
  • Jillian Winter (4current PhD) presented “Give Yourself to Death: Charitable Giving as Addiction in Frances Burney’s Cecilia” and “‘Depend upon it, it is not you that are wanted; depend upon it, it is me’: Renegotiating Mrs. Norris as the (Awful and Philanthropic) Hero of Mansfield Park” at ASECS Conference. Virtual. April 2021.
  • Caitlin Coulter (current PhD) presented “Where the Wife May Not Go: Exploring the Impact of World War I on Female Sexuality in Literature” on the panel of Feminist and Counter-Feminist Topics in (Post)Modern Fiction at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900,(February 2020). She also presented  “Examining Political Possibilities through Felt Theory and Longmire” on the panel for Rhetorical Activism Across Disability, Indigenous, and Queer Studies at the 2019 Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, (November 2019).
  • Rick Halkyard (current PhD) presented “Thunderings of Battle: War Fervor & William Dean Howells’ ‘Editha’” at the 48th Annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture Since 1900.
  • Margaret  Kelly (current PhD) received the Outstanding Literature TA of the Year Award. She presented “Navigating Haunted Housing in Brooks’s Maud Martha & Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones” and “Gothic Girlhood: Intersecting Identities Across Gothic Traditions,” (Panel Organizer & Chair) at the Northeast Modern Language Association, Boston, MA, March 2020. She won the NeMLA Graduate Student Caucus Travel Award.
  • Katie Kohls (2current PhD) presented "Racebending and (Re)reading Whiteness: Adapting the Canon to Critique Imperialism and White Nationalism” at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, November 2019.
  • Emily Naser-Hall (3rd yr PhD) published “The Ghost Dance: Accessing and Accepting Intersectional Identity Through Spectrality,” Proceedings of the Third Purdue, Linguistics, Literature, and Second Language Studies Conference, edited by Libby Chernouski and David O’Neil, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
  • Jannell McConnell Parsons (current PhD) was the first place winner of this year's GradTeach Live competition! Her talk -- "Centering Student Agency: Target Public Audiences and Oral Histories in Appalachia" -- came out of a WRD course she teaches in partnership with the Nunn Center and discussed how she and her students work together to create meaningful projects with real-world audiences. 
  • Jenn Murray (current PhD) published “Embracing Madness: Elie Wiesel’s Madmen and Their Roles in His Works” in The Struggle for Understanding: Elie Wiesel’s Literary Works. Eds. Victoria Nesfield and Philip Smith. SUNY Press, August 2019.
  • Shelby Roberts (current PhD) presented “‘No heroes, no oracles’: Appalachian Fatalism and the American Grotesque,” at UK's 2020 EGSO Conference.
  • Jess Van Gilder (current PhD) presented "The Deadly Spectrum of Mind Misreading in Clarissa" on the Situated Minds Panel (Panel organizer and paper presenter) at the 2020 ISSN Narrative Conference, New Orleans, LA; "I Saw the Sign(posts): Reconciling Rhetorical and Signpost Approaches to Fictionality through Fictionalization" (Co-author of paper) at the 2020 Narrative Conference, New Orleans, LA March 2020; and "Mobilizing Hope in Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative to Create an Affective Truth" on the Affective Truths Panel (Panel organizer and paper presenter) at the 2020 UKY EGSO Symposium, Lexington, KY February 2020.
  • Brandon West (current PhD) presented “The Aesthetic of Disgust: Rape-Revenge Fiction's Moral Shortcomings” at the International Conference on Narrative, New Orleans, March 2020.
  • Daria Goncharova (current PhD) presented “Queering Divine Apocalypse in John Rechy’s City of Night,” at the Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference, New Orleans, LA, May 2; and “’Whose Huck is it?’: Mark Twain and His Legacy During the Cold War,” at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention, Washington D.C., March 2019.
  • Zach Griffith (current PhD) published “Images, Silences, and the Archival Record: An Interview with Michelle Caswellin," in Disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory vol. 27, no. 1. He also became co-editor of Disclosure. He presented “‘We Never Shape the World’: Slave Geographies and the African-American Archive in A Mercy” at the MELUS Conference in Cincinnati. 
  • Margaret Kelly (current PhD) presented at NeMLA.
  • Katie Kohls (current PhD) presented “Fostering Critical Flexibility: Designing Peer Mentor Programs that Help New TAs Make It Work,” College English Association of Ohio Conference, Findlay, OH, April 2019.
  • Emily Naser-Hall (current PhD) presented "A Girl Is No One: The Spectral Woman in Game of Thrones and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine" at 50th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association. She also  presented at the Popular Culture Association of the South Conference and the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference, and she was the panel moderator for the Horror: Gender and Race panel at the Popular Culture Association of the South Conference. She was the winner of the Gary Burns Graduate Student Paper Award for ""A Girl Is No One: The Metaphor of the Spectral Woman in Game of Thrones and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine."
  • Amanda Salmon (current PhD) presented at the Popular Culture Association of the South conference in New Orleans.

 

Undergraduate Student News

  • Eleni Karelis (current undergrad) is the undergraduate winner of the 2023 King Library Press Broadside Contest. She will receive $100 and copies of her beautifully handprinted letterpress broadside created by artist Paul Holbrook. The judge, poet Makalani Bandele, says this about the winning poem, “I Do It For You”: “This short, tender, unsuspecting poem demonstrates the power of poems to reveal not just one's feelings, but one's feelings about how it felt. Without hyperbole or romanticism, it impresses a mnemonic and subtly didactic quality on the reader by simultaneously calling to mind instances of tenderness you've experienced and instructing you to pay closer attention to the little details in life often overlooked.”
  • Alexis Baker's (current undergraduate) Kentucky Kernel article, “‘Let this be a movement.’ Peaceful protest conducted for victim of racial violence on campus” was mentioned by The Washington Post.
  • Ella Brown-Terry (current BA) is in the 2022 class of Chellgren Student Fellows. The Chellgren Center Student Fellows Program aligns with the university’s goal of cultivating undergraduate excellence. By providing experiences that go beyond the classroom, students become prepared for the next phase of their career, whether it be graduate school, a position in their field or a gap year dedicated to service.
  • Emily Keaton (current BA) has been selected for the Sustainability Summer Research Fellowship program, a high-impact learning experience that contributes to the students’ academic growth as well as sustainability-focused research initiatives at UK and within the community at large. https://uknow.uky.edu/research/8-students-selected-sustainability-summe…. She has been selected for the 2022-23 Undergraduate Research Ambassador program. The program’s mission is to increase awareness and create opportunities for students to actively engage in research and creative scholarship. Ambassadors must demonstrate academic excellence, leadership potential and be involved in mentored research, such as tabling, information sessions, student workshops, speaking engagements, class and student organization presentations, and OUR-sponsored events including the 5-Minute Fast Track Competition and Showcase of Undergraduate Scholars. https://uknow.uky.edu/research/22-students-selected-undergraduate-resea…. She is a finalist in the fourth annual 5-Minute Fast Track Research Competition. https://uknow.uky.edu/research/10-students-selected-5-minute-fast-track…;
  • Kaylee Lloyd (current BA) had a short play, "Purgatoria," produced and performed by Cypress Productions in the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center here in Lexington on June 23, 24, and 25. It was featured as part of their showcase of new works, New Horizons. This is their playwriting debut. They write under the pen name Elle Kenning.

 

Faculty News

  • DaMaris B. Hill and Crystal Wilkinson (current faculty) participated in bell hooks: becoming, being, beyond, a podcast miniseries from Kentucky Humanities. Listen here: https://www.kyhumanities.org/programs/think-humanities-podcast
  • Nazera Sadiq Wright (current faculty) gave a keynote lecture, “Frances E. W. Harper’s Library Ticket,” for the Dickens Universe in July. https://dickens.ucsc.edu/universe/index.html. She has three recent essays: “Imagining Freedom: Black Girlhood in the Sanders-Venning Family, 1815–1890,” Global History of Black Girlhood. Eds. Corinne Fields and LaKisha Michelle Simmons. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p086694; “Frances E. W. Harper and her Contemporaries.” Nineteenth Century American Literature: In Transition, 1820-1860. Ed. Justine Murison. Cambridge Univ. Press.  2022: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/american-literature-in-transit…; “Post-Civil War Black Childhoods.” African American Literature: In Transition, 1865- 1880. Ed. Joycelyn Moody and Eric Gardner. Cambridge University Press. 2021: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/african-american-literature-in….
  • Regina Hamilton-Townsend (current faculty) was recognized on the field prior to one of our home football games for the 2022 Outstanding Teaching Awards.
  • Peter Kalliney’s (current faculty) new book is featured in UKnow http://uknow.uky.edu/research/english-professor-explores-how-cold-war-p….
  • Andrew Milward (current professor) has a short story, "Derby Day," forthcoming in The Notre Dame Review.
  • Peter Kalliney (current professor) published the book, The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature. The book tells the story of how cold war superpower competition affected the development of literature in the decolonizing world, with a special emphasis on anglophone African writing. In the first half of the book, Kalliney discusses US and Soviet cultural diplomacy programs, which were extensive, and in the second half, Kalliney examines the state security agencies that spied on, censored, deported, and imprisoned writers. A podcast can tell you more about the project if you are curious: https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-aesthetic-cold-war 
  • DaMaris Hill (current faculty) received a  2023 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship and a 2023 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship.
  • Michelle Sizemore (current faculty) has a book chapter, “The Affective Post-War,” forthcoming in Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, Vol 1, eds. William Huntting Howell and Greta LaFleur. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2022. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/american-literature-in-transit…
  • Crystal Wilkinson (current faculty) was named by The Academy of American Poets Awards as a Poet Laureate Fellow. https://poets.org/announcing-2022-poet-laureate-fellows
  • Andrew Milward (current faculty) will be the Writer-in-Residence for the month of June at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts in Fairhope, Alabama. 

 

Alumni News

  • makalani bandele (MFA ’21) has won Futurepoem's 2022 Other Futures Award for his book, jopappy & the sentence-makers are) eponymous as funk. His book will be published in the Spring. It is a conceptual literary enterprise that imagines and recontextualizes for readers the Free Jazz performance of the fictional band jopappy & the sentence-makers. The poems and visual art in this book investigate anti-blackness, Western hegemonies, and the resilience and transcendence of Black culture. All the poems in this collection were written in a poetic form bandele invented called ‘the unit’, inspired by virtuoso pianist and composer Cecil Taylor’s groundbreaking 1966 album, Unit Structures. The free jazz ethos and how it encourages polyvocality and a panoply of cultural and rhetorical references in a nonlinear, discordant, hermeneutically open modality make the unit arguably the first, self-consciously post-structuralist poetic form. https://www.futurepoem.com/submit/other-futures-award.
  • Gracie Elliott (BA '22) will be attending the University of Richmond School of Law, aiming to practice Intellectual Property Law or Sports and Entertainment Law upon completing her J.D. 
  • Clayton Dalton (BA '22) accepted a position as a Public Affairs Associate Producer at Kentucky Educational Television where he contributes to daily public television broadcasts.
  • Shannon Branfield (4th year PhD) presented at the Midwest Conference on British Studies,"'They Watched Each Other': Marital Surveillance in Sensation Fiction," and attended the Dickens Universe.
  • Makalani Bandele (MFA ’21) has poems, photography, and a collaborative video project in an international publication theHythe’s Digital Poetics: https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/digital-poetics-323-five-uni….
  • Haley Powell (BA '21) will be attending the IU Maurer School of Law in Bloomington for her JD to pursue a career in international law and constitution building.
  • Megan Pillow (PhD '20) published an essay, "Living Memory," in Guernica, and was named by Longreads as one of their Top 5 Longreads of the Week.
  • Hailey Combs (BA '21) a UK BLUE student, will be attending the UK Law School on scholarship to pursue a career in Criminal Law.
    John Duncan (MFA '16) has a story, “Of shipwrecks and serpents and Marilyn Monroe,” in Lighthouse Weekly. https://www.lighthouseweekly.com/
  • Gavin Colton (MFA ’21) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Appalachian Review for his story, “Little Piles of Change.” https://uncpress.org/book/9781469672458/appalachian-review-winter-2022/.
  • Angel C. Dye (MFA ’19) is the 2022-2023 Shirley Graham Du Bois Creative-in-Residence with Castle of Our Skins based in Boston. https://www.castleskins.org/creative-in-residence.html. She has new poems published in The Langston Hughes Review: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/langston-hughes/article-….
  • Kesla Elmore (MA '20) was accepted into Penn State’s Inaugural Cooper - Du Bois Mentoring Program. She presented a paper at the KYGWS Conference entitled, "IF YOU F*CK WITH ME, I'LL TAKE YOUR MAN: Black Women, Hip Hop, and the Politics of (Linguistic) Sexual Liberation," with Christopher Dale.
  • makalani bandele's (MFA '21) poem, “Afropessimism 101: Quiz on System of Weights used (1619-Present),” won the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Experimental Poetry Prize.
  • Gavin Colton (MFA '21) has an essay, "Teeth," at Hippocampus. His story, "Lippy," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Wax Paper. His essay, "Bury Me Here," was published in The Honest Ulsterman.https://humag.co/prose/bury-me-here.
  • Angel C. Dye (MA '19) published her debut chapbook, Breathe, forthcoming from Central Square Press.
  • Chioma Ezeano (MFA '22) published a story, "Small Girl Landlady," in Granta: https://granta.com/small-girl-landlady/. Her story, "You Girls Are Good," was published in Guernica: https://www.guernicamag.com/you-girls-are-good/. She joined the O'Henry Prize as an intern and as a reader.
  • Austyn Gaffney (MFA '18) published an essay, “Magic City,” in Kenyon Review. Listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/the-kenyon-review/magic-city-by-austyn-gaffney. Her article "Is This Giant Greenhouse in Kentucky the Future of Farming?" appeared in Rolling Stone.
  • Ben Wilson (PhD '21) presented “’This is the World’: Robert Penn Warren’s Poetic and Democratic Visions,” at the Robert Penn Warren Circle Annual Meeting, April 2021 meeting (rescheduled from 2020 meeting). He pubilshed “Global Modernist Literature and Metropolitan Unreality,” in Tropics of Meta, 16 January 2020.
  • Leigh Glanzman (MFA '20) has had the following poems recently published: “Dead Girl in a Dumpster Behind an Arby’s in South Phoenix Uncovered by Thursday’s Monsoon" and "Do you believe in hearts?" in South Dakota Review; "constellation" in Pretty Owl Poetry; "lessons" in Harpur Palate; "So Many" and "The Girl They Buried" in Barely South Review; "Ghazal Meant to Be Sung to the Sea" in Iron Horse Literary Review; "carelessness" and "Spreading My Brother's Ashes" in Santa Clara Review; "one day, my mother dies" in Mom Egg Review; "Leaving Las Vegas, New Mexico" in Whale Road Review. Her short stories have appeared in the following journals: "the girl in the ghost dress lies" in Puerto del Sol; "Sample Questions from Application to Marry Me" in perhappened; and "Rapunzel Makes Her Own Door" in Fudoki Magazine. Additionally, "Haiku for leaving flowers on your headstone on the fifteenth anniversary" won the Loud Coffee Press Haiku Contest; and her story "Gretl at Hansel's Deathbed" was nominated by perhappened for Best Small Fictions. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the digital literary journal miniskirt magazine. Her micro-chapbook, my mother as a lighthouse, my father as the sea, was published by Ghost City Press in August 2021.
  • Chan Kelly (MFA '21) published her story, "Black History," in Kweli Lierary Journal.
  • Sean Madden (MFA '16) has two poems forthcoming: "Note for Inspector" in The Emerson Review and "Decoy" in Sierra Nevada Review. In 2021, two other poems were published: "The Sardines, Jeff" in Slant and "Black Sedan" in Hawaii Pacific Review. He also had a story, "Dry January," appear in The Nonconformist. The president of the Arizona State Poetry Society selected him as a guest judge for the society's 2021 Annual Contest. His story, "How the Lonesome Engine Drivers Pine," was part of the fall 2021 creative writing curriculum at Jesuit High School in Carmichael, CA.
  • NitaJade (MFA '22) published two poems, “on not-drowning” and “slow down with that oven girl” in Carolina Muse. Three poems, "how i arrived," "shame(d),"on not-drowning," were accepted in Zora's Den and will be published in their next anthology, The Fire Inside. Two poems "tea tree & jojoba" and "how I arrived," are forthcoming in Inverted Syntax. Their poem, "delay(?)," was published in Poetry Northwest.
  • Neleigh Olson (MFA '18) is a Baltic Writing Residency Kentucky Writers Fellow.
  • Betsy Packard (MFA '22) has a poem, "Medea," forthcomng in the fall edition of The Whimsical Poet.
  • Erika Simpson (MFA '21) will write for HBO's The Vanishing Half. Her essay, "If You Ever Find Yourself," was published in Audacity.
  • Andrew Beutel (PhD '19) was nominated for the 2019 Teachers Who Made a Difference Award, sponsored by the UK College of Education. 
  • Kyle Eveleth (PhD '19), along with co-editor Joseph Michael Sommers (Central Michigan University), published an edited volume on the graphic works of Neil Gaiman: The Artistry of Neil Gaiman: Finding Light in the Shadows (University Press of Mississippi).
  • Alex Gergely (MA '21) was accepted to the University of Kentuckys PhD in English. He has bee promoted to Assistant Editor of Early Americanl Literature. His article, “Textual Criticism and the Archive: Locating Editions of the Panther Captivity Narrative” is forthcoming from Early American Literature, 56.2 in July 2021. He presented “Living in History: Subjectivity, Destiny, and Human Agency in Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’” at SAMLA 92, virtual conference, November 13 – 15, 2020. He also presented “‘Accept the University of Death’: Childhood, Mothering, and Black Mortality in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Annie Allen” at the English Graduate Student Organization 2020 Symposium: Noise & Silence: Everyday Politics of Erasure, University of Kentucky, February 29, 2020, and “Apocalypse, Depravity, and Heterodoxy: Ellen La Motte’s Secular Theology of War” at The 2020 Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture since 1900, University of Louisville, February 20 – February 22, 2020.
  • Rachel McCoy (MA '21) presented “All Hail the Story, Supreme Leader: The Theory of Authorship Presented in His Girl Friday” at the 2020 EGSO Symposium. Lexington, KY, 29 February 2020. She won the Hemenway Writing Center Excellence in Consulting Award from UK.
  • Megan Pillow (PhD ’20) has a piece, “Long Live the Girl Detective,” in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-best-american-mystery-and-su…
  • Anna Bedsole (5PhD '19) won the “People's Choice Award” at the final round of the Regional 3MT (Three Minute Thesis) Competition at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools, Knoxville, TN. Anna was the only Humanities candidate in the entire competition which included 45 competitors from universities across the south. Of the 45 competitors, only eight candidates went into the final round. She also won 1st place in the 3 Minute Thesis competition.
  • Brittany Sulzener (PhD '22) published “Night of Death, Morning of Rebirth: Maria W. Stewart’s Apocalyptic Futures" in Nineteenth Century Contexts, vol. 41, no. 5.
  • Erika Simpson (MFA ‘ 21) has a piece, “If You Ever Find Yourself,” in The Best American Essays 2022. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-best-american-essays-2022-al…. She has a memoir forthcoming from Scribner.
  • Sean Madden’s (MFA '16) poem, "Note for Inspector," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Emerson Review. https://issuu.com/emerson_review/docs/emerson_review_2022_master_for_on…. He has a story, "To the Land of Funk," out this month with Copper Nickel. http://copper-nickel.org/journal/fall-2022/. His poem, "Decoy," is forthcoming in Sierra Nevada Review.
  • Jessica Evans (PhD '17) had a chapter on "Redefining the Gothic Child: An Educational Experiment" published in Literary Cultures and Eighteenth-Century Childhoods by Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • Jenna Goldsmith (PhD '16) published a chapbook of poems, genesis near the river, from blush books.
  • Makalani Bandele (MFA ’21), Frank X Walker (current professor), and Crystal Wilkinson (current professor) were featured in an article about Affrilachian Writers last week in Kentucky Monthly: http://www.kentuckymonthly.com/culture/arts-entertainment/a-family-of-w…;
  • Eir-Anne Edgar (PhD ’16) published the chapter, “Re-Conceiving the World: Dystopia and Reproductive Justice” in The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-99530-0. 
  • Owen R. Horton (PhD '18) published the chapter "Masculinity, Isolation, and Revenge: John Wick's Liminal Body." The Worlds of John Wick. Ed. Stephen Watt. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2022. 
  • Anna Froula (PhD ’08) published “‘That’s How We Learn’: Ben Fountain Talks with Student Veterans at East Carolina University,” in the North Carolina Literary Review; and “Odysseus Goes to University: The Veteran to Scholar Boot Camp at East Carolina University” in The Journal of Veteran Studies https://doi.org/10.21061/jvs.v8i3.344.
  • Melissa Purdue (PhD ’07) has had a couple of publications in the Journal of Victorian Culture this year, one on Anna Kingsford: https://jvc.oup.com/2022/01/13/anna-kingsford/; and another on 19th-century killer plant fiction: https://jvc.oup.com/2022/06/28/tales-of-vampiric-plants/ 
  • Omaria Pratt (MFA ‘19) has a piece, “Shard of Bone,” in Taint Taint Taint: https://www.tainttainttaintmagazine.com/omaria-pratt
  • Matt Bryant Cheney (PhD ‘19) was named President of the Flannery O'Connor Society.
  • Julie R. Voss (PhD ‘06) has an article, “‘The Greatest Eloquence’: James Cathcart and the Power of Words in Eighteenth-Century Barbary,” in Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Antiquarian Association. http://commonplace.online/article/the-greatest-eloquence/
  • Sarah Jiang (MFA ’21) took a position as a post-doc at the University of California San Diego.
  • Kyle Eveleth (PhD ‘19) has been selected to serve as the Clayton B. Ofstad Linguistics Scholar-in-Residence at Truman State University for 2023. 
  • Travis L. Martin (PhD ’17) has a book, War & Homecoming, coming out: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813195643/war-and-homecoming/                                               
  • Makalani Bandele (MFA ’21) has a featured poem, “ and an essay on the drafting/revision process in Underbelly Mag. https://www.underbellymag.com/makalani-bandele, as well as a poem and video featured in Red Ogre Review https://ogre.red/issues/2022-06/2022-06-bandele-makalani/
  • Emily Goldsmith (MFA ’21) passed her qualifying exams in her PhD program at USM. She has a poem, “The Pope Said Alligator was a Fish ,” in The Penn Review. https://www.pennreview.org/the-pope-said-alligator-was-a-fish
  • Angel Dye (MFA ’19) passed her written and oral Ph.D. qualifying exams on May 10th, 2022. She is a finalist for the Castle of Our Skins Shirley Graham Du Bois Creative-in-Residence position. She has also been asked by poet/professor Kyle Dargan, Books Editor at Wondaland, to collaborate on a forthcoming public reading guide for Janelle Monae's short story collection, The Memory Librarian. has new poetry published in the spring issue of Ample Remains Journal,  Allium Journal, and The Langston Hughes Review. She has new poetry published in the spring issue of Ample Remains Journal,  Allium Journal, and The Langston Hughes Review.
  • Claire Lenviel (PhD '21) has an article, “Vulnerable Youth in Richard Wright’s Protest Fiction,” forthcoming in Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 2, 2021.
  • Leslie Malland (PhD '21) co-edited The History of the International Grasslands Congress, 1927-2020, forthcoming from the International Grasslands Congress. She published a review of Assisted Death in the Age of Biopolitics and Bioeconomy by Anna E. Kubiak in Mortality, and the article “Denied the Rights of Citizenship: Biopolitical Rhetoric and Anti-Semitism in Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller,” in Arkansas Philological Review, vol. 45, no. 2. She presented “‘The Rest is Silence’: Embodied Rhetoric and Anatomy in Hamlet,” at The Renaissance Society of America. Dublin, Ireland, *virtual, Spring 2021; “Othello’s Duality: Religion in the Soul and on the Body,” at the Shakespeare Association of America. Panel, “Religion, Race, and Bad Humour in Early Modern Drama,” led by Kimberly Ann Coles, *virtual, Spring 2021; and “Questions of Citizenship Upon the scaffold,” at The Death and Culture Network. St. John University, University of York, *virtual, Fall 2020. She was the recipient of the Ben Wathen Black Memorial Graduate Scholarship in British Literature, as well as a UK Summer Stipend. She presented “Biopolitics and Early Modern England’s Necro-Culture” at the Association of the Rhetoric for Science, Technology, and Medicine preconference of the National Communications Association. Fall 2019. Baltimore, MA. She received a UK Travel Grant, and was a finalist in the 3MT.
  • Katie McClain (PhD '22) presented “Adapting Outdated Literary Rebels: Upton Sinclair, E.L. Doctorow, and the Potential for 21st Century Advocacy Claims in Chris Bachelder’s U.S.!” at the SAMLA Conference/Association of Adaptation Studies, Online Conference, Fall 2020. She presented “‘Awakened by Silence’: Narrative Sound and Silence in John Rechy’s City of Night and Samuel Steward’s Parisian Lives” at the Conference/Association of Adaptation Studies, Atlanta GA, Fall 2019.
  • Alex Menrisky (PhD '19) has a book, Wild Abandon, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. He  accepted an offer as a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, starting in July 2021.
  • Elizabeth Packard (MFA '21) has been hired by the Department of English at BCTC as one of their tutors, especially working with ESL students, and has been accepted into the master's program at UK in Library and Information Science. She has a flash fiction piece, "The Lie" in The Pine Cone Journal. 
  • NitaJade (MFA '21) will be featured on tan episode of "Words for the People," Prof. Crystal Wilkinson's NPR podcast. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1093753887/words-for-the-people
  • Titus Chalk (MFA '21) has a story, "This Body Also Dances" forthcoming in the Peauxdunque Review and ". -..- -.-. .... .- -. --. ."  forthcoming in Nimrod International.
  • Ash Baker (MFA '20) has a story, "Nightmare in Red, Blue, Green" forthcoming in Sporazine.
  • makalani bandele (MFA '21) has the following publications and honors: under the aegis of a winged mind, won the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was e published in September 2020; "blues in b for charlie" was nominated by Harbor Review for Best of the Net; “unit_80,” “unit_111,” unit_32,” and “unit_95,” are forthcoming in Inverted Syntax; “unit_68;” “unit_4, an interrogative unit,” is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle; "scary meds,” "ghost of the piano,” "pianism (alternate take),” and “cutting contest" are forthcoming in Artful Dodge; “unit_63 for the player in you,” “unit_72 building 11,” and “a unit_9 kind of love,” are forthcoming in Ocean State Review;  “unit_84,” “unit_35,” “unit_26,” “unit_19,” “unit_57,” and “unit_43,” are forthcoming in Posit Journal; “unit_79, an intensive care unit” and “unit_50, overtime” are forthcoming in Variant Literature Journal, Issue#4. He was the feature poet for A Dozen Nothing for February 2021.
  • Gavin Colton (MFA '21) has a short story, “The Lippy” forthcoming in The Wax Paper.
  • Austyn Gaffney (MFA '18) reports on the protests in Louisville for Rolling Stone. 
  • Emily Goldsmith (MFA '21) has a poem, "Valhalla," in Vagabond City Litereary Journal. She will begin the PhD in Poetry at The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg in the Fall. Fine Print Press nominated her for a Pushcart Prize for “Arkansas Roaming Wide.” She also published “Queer Poem,” and “Clitoris Poem,” in The Giving Room Review; “An Envie,” and “Post-Break Up with God,” in Windows Facing Windows Review; “I can’t tell you every secret,” in Versification;  and “Valhalla” in Vagabond City Lit.
  • Megan D. Henson (MFA '16) published her second book, Little Girl Gray with Dos Madres Press.
  • Jordan Honeyblue (MFA '21) has two poems, ""I'm just a black goddess" and "ryne/river/gopd," forthcoming in New Orleans Review. She published an article, “Black Englishes and AAVE” forthcoming in The University of Kentucky’s Town Branch, 7th edition (Fall 2021). She was accepted as a fellow into Harvard University’s LabXChange Program for their Antiracist Science Education Project, and will be writing content for teachers and learners on Racism as Public Health Issue and/or Antiracist and Inclusive Teaching during the time of our fellowship. The opportunity will allow her to work remotely with a global team of writers, researchers, and designers in order to best complete the project. She was nominated for 2021 Best New Poets by The New Orleans Review (April 2021).
  • Sarah Jiang (MFA '21) published "The Pork Ribs" in Peauxdunque Review and "Panning for Gold" in The Write Launch.
  • Sean Madden (MFA '16) has had five poems published: "Losing a Friend on Tax Day" in 580 Split, "Well-Schooled Heart" in The William and Mary Review, "The Sun Appeals to the Lady in the Moon" in Jelly Bucket, "Ace" in Sport Literate, and "Palm Frond Cross" in CAROUSEL. His story, "The Growing Terror of Nothing to Think About," appeared in White Wall Review, and was a finalist for the 52nd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest. His craft essay, "Fiction at the Sentence Level: Elements of Craft in John Updike's 'The Happiest I've Been'", appeared in Small Print.
  • NitaJade (MFA '22) was accepted as a fellow into Harvard University’s LabXChange Program for their Antiracist Science Education Project, and will be writing content for teachers and learners on Racism as Public Health Issue and/or Antiracist and Inclusive Teaching during the time of our fellowship. The opportunity will allow them to work remotely with a global team of writers, researchers, and designers in order to best complete the project. They have been selected as a KFW Summer Resident for Blooming: How to Bloom with Ellen Hagan. Their poem, “rather than, see” was published in Awake.
  • Rocky Olive (MFA '20) published a short story, "Resurrection" in Southern Humanities Review. 
  • Gabrielle Oliver (MFA '21) received a 2nd place award for the Voices of Color Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her poem, "MOOR," was published in The Amistad. Her poem "ten translations of "Bambo Balanta"" was published by Touchstone Literary Magazine.
  • Betsy Packard (MFA '22) published her poem, "The Kelpie's Visit," in Witches & Pagans Magazine. Her poem,"Guinevere's Lament," will be published Second Chance Lit. Three poems are forthcoming from The Atherton Review: "Defenestration: Blame the Victim #1," "Medusa: Blame the Victim #2," "Metamorphosis: Blame the Victim #3." Her poem "Drives," is forthcoming from Honeyguide Magazine.
  • Zeke Perkins (MFA '20) published his story, "Hot Black Bubbles" in Volume 1 Brooklyn. 
  • Omaria Pratt (MFA '19) published her story ""Blood Sisters on the Ghost Train" in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Volume XII honoring Crystal Wilkinson in May 2020, and her story "Hyde River" is forthcoming in Story Magazine Fall 2020 issue in November.
  • Dane Ritter (MFA '20) published a poem, "Hell is Highwater," in Flare Journal.
  • Madison Justice (BA '20) will begin graduate studies at St. Andrews in Scotland, a university established in 1413 and renowned for its Medieval Literature program.
  • Maya Pierce (BA '20) will be attending Georgetown Law School in Washington D.C. to pursue a career in Constitutional Law.
  • Emily Keaton (BA '20) earned 3rd place at the competitive 2nd annual 5-Minute Fast Track Research Competition.
  • Jacob Reynolds (BA '22) and Nick Volosky (BA '22) completed two short documentaries that screened at the Fall 2019 UKY Student Film Festival. Their films, Carts (Reynolds, 3 minutes) and Versailles, KY (Volosky, 12 minutes) were produced in an English independent study where they developed, shot and edited their films. Nick, a Creative Writing Minor, received the Audience Choice Award and 2nd Best Overall.
  • Nathaniel Cortas (BA '19) received a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Turkey.
  • MiKayla Carter (BA' '19) accepted a full-time position in marketing for UK Libraries.
  • Shania Goble (BA '20) and Katie Huffman (BA '20) have been awarded English-Speaking Union (ESU) Scholarships presented by the English-Speaking Union Kentucky Branch. The scholarships will cover Goble and Huffman's expenses for summer study at Oxford University.
  • makalani bandele (MFA '21) had a poem, "ÉTUDE OP. 15, NO. 1." published in Foundry; and three poems are forthcoming: "earl of harlem meets the high preist of bebop," from Prairie Schooner, "what to do while fresh ideas are organizing," from The Bookends Review, and "the cruel blue," from iO Literary. Also, he had a poem, "AFTER ECT," publish in ANMLY, and a poem, "Last Supper of Bop," published in Killens Review.
  • Bernard Clay's (MFA '17) first book, English Lit (Old Cove Press 2019), was a top seller at the Kentucky Book Fair.
  • Angel C. Dye (MFA '19) published her poem, "Dating in the Age of Buzzwords," in The Blue Mountain Review and her poem, "GENESIS/A POEM FOR TONI," in a gathering together. 
  • Jeremy Flick (MFA '19) was nominated for the Best of the Net 2019 for his poem, "Bent," originally published in Matador Review.
  • Leigh Glanzman (MFA '20) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Sleet Magazine for her poem, "Our Birthday, at the Beach." She also had a poem "the mapmaker's daughter" published in Stonecoast Review.
  • John Larson (MFA '20) published his story, "Pace," in GRIFFEL, and his poem, "2019: The Year I Act Like a Dumb Bitch for Likes," in pulpMAG.
  • Sean Madden (MFA '16) had a story, "How the Lonesome Engine Drivers Pine," published by Alternating Current Press. This story was a finalist for the 2018 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, and will be included in an anthology in early 2020. He also has two forthcoming poems: "Proposition" will appear in the December 2019 issue of Ponder Review, and "Attendance" will appear in the 2020 edition of Roanoke Review.
  • Gabby Oliver (MFA '21) presented on the  Black Artists and Resistance Narratives panel at the 2020 EGSO Symposium, University of Kentucky. She published "Movie-Making” in Penumbra Literary Journal.
  • Erika Simpson (MFA '21) presented "Black Ladyhood: Who Defines It and How is it Attained? Exploring African American Women’s Interiority in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha" at the 2020 EGSO Symposium.
  • Ash Baker (MFA '20) won the 2019 internal Mill House Residency competition. They also published a film review of THEY (2017, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh) in Cinematary, and a blurb of ZAMA (2018, Lucrecia Martel) in Cinematary's Best Foreign Films of 2018 Canon.
  • Catherine Brereton (MFA '16) won an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.
  • makalani bandele (MFA '21) has a poem, "blues in b for charlie," in Harbor Review. He also had three excerpts from his new book, under the aegis of a winged mind, in Barzakh Magazine, and "quick recipe for genius" was published in Protean Magazine.
  • Bernard Clay (MFA '17) has a book, English Lit, forthcoming from Old Cove Press.
  • Amanda Kelley Corbin (MFA '17) received a Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant to work on a new novel. She was also interviewed for the Bluegrass Bookend radio show.
  • Sean Corbin (MFA '16) published his chapbook, The Leper Dreams of Snow (Finishing Line Press 2018).
  • Angel C. Dye (MFA '19) has won a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation to attend the 2019 Furious Flower Summer Legacy Seminar. She was also commissioned in fall 2018 to write poetry that will be performed alongside a musical exploration of the Red Summer of 1919 by the Grace Chorale of Brooklyn and an ensemble.
  • Austyn Gaffney (MFA '18) had an essay, "A Small Town’s Battle Against Radioactive Fracking Waste," published in onEarth. She also had an essay, "Homing,"  which was runner-up in a nonfiction contest judged by Leslie Jamison, published in Blue Mesa Review. She will be a Brush Creek Arts residencent for literary arts in January 2019, a PLAYA residencent for literary arts in March 2019, and an Editorial Fellow for Sierra Magazine beginning in July 2019. She was the Writing by Writers residency for literary arts. Her essay, "Composting," was published in Prairie Schooner and her essay, "Ha Ling," was published in Brevity in September 2018.
  • Leigh Glanzman (MFA '20) had a poem "Possession" published in Tipton Poetry Journal; a short story "Equations for a Falling Body" was the runner-up for the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, subsequently published in Electric Lit; and a poem "Our Birthday, at the Beach" was published in Sleet Magazine. 
  • Suzanne Fernandez Gray (MFA '19) has an essay, "Wayne's", in Fourth Genre.
  • Parker Hobson (MFA '18) won an Emerging Artist grants from the Kentucky Arts Council.
  • Sean Madden (MFA '16) had a poem, "God, What I Wouldn't Give for a Saturday Night," published in The Stillwater Review, and had his story, "Who Sharpens the Pencils," in Waccamaw. He published “Isaac’s Curse,” an excerpt from his novel-in-progress, in Blue River.
  • Zeke Perkins (MFA '20) won the Peauxdunque Review's Words and Music Competition in the Short Story Category.
  • Krystin Santos (MFA '18) had her essay, "A Broke Girl’s Guide to Atlantic City," published in Litro. She has accepted a full-time lectureship at LSU in Composition and Creative Writing.
  • Gary Thomas Smith (MFA '17) has a story, "The Elk," in Appalachian Heritage.
  • Kate Tighe-Pigott (MFA '18) had stories published in Grist Online, Willow Springs. Issue 83 (forthcoming), Passages North, and River River. She will now be represented by Rebecca Gradinger of Fletcher and Co.
  • John Duncan (MFA '18) publish his story "girl on parade of killers" in Product Magazine.
  • Austyn Gaffney (MFA '18) was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship for Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference.
  • Suzanne Fernandez Gray (MFA '19) published her satirical creative nonfiction piece "College Course Registration" in McSweeney's.
  • Sean Madden (MFA '16) had his story, “How the Lonesome Engine Drivers Pine,” named a finalist for Alternating Current Press’s 2018 Luminaire Award for Best Prose. He published his story "Subtraction" in The Los Angeles Review. 
  • Gary Thomas Smith (MFA '17) published his story "Raw" in Still: The Journal.
  • Rachel Carr (PhD '19) was one of the recipients of the Rappis Endowment for Graduate Student Research, she also won the Provost's Outstanding Teaching Award, and  accepted a position to join the faculty at Lindsey Wilson College, as an Assistant Professor of English.