Tuesday = Good News

In the latest installment of the “Good News” series, the Ball State English department highlights the accomplishments of our faculty and students up through the month of November.

That’s right. We have so much good news that we’re sharing it once a month rather than once a semester. Interested in past Good News posts? Check them out here.

photo provided by Mark Neely

photo provided by Mark Neely

Mark Neely has won a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship in Creative Writing/Poetry. This is a $25,000 award, a national award of great distinction. You can see the full list of winners here.

Jackie Grutsch McKinney

  • She won the International Writing Center Association Scholarship Award for Best Book for Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers.
  • Here’s an interview in which she talks about the book.

Frank Felsenstein has been invited to give a lecture on Inkle & Yarico in Barbados in January, in conjunction with a public unveiling of a monument to Yarico. The event is backed by the office of the Prime Minister of Barbados. He was invited by John Kidd, co-producer of Yarico: The Musical. Frank himself has published multiple books on the subject of Inkle and Yarico, and is in talks to give a parallel lecture in London coinciding with the launch of the musical.

Kendra Roberts

Kendra Roberts, a junior creative writing major, will be a communications intern for the Indiana State House during Spring 2015. She will help write/edit/publish press releases, as well as work with social media and design tools for the members. She will also proofread speeches by House members. She is just one of 11 interns selected for this internship program.

Matthias Raess presents at SLRF.

Matthias Raess presents at SLRF.

Linguistics conference

A group of Linguistics graduate students recently attended the Second Language Research Forum (SLRF)  This is one of the two national-level refereed conferences in Second Language Acquisition. The selection process is competitive, so not many graduate students get their papers accepted. The graduate students started their projects in Spring 2014 in their courses and continued during summer and fall to complete the projects.

  • Matthias Raess presented on “Semantic transparency and idiom retention.”
  • ShaneLanning,Phuong Tran,Seula Han, & Thom McAlister presented on “Acquiringnon-lexicalizedL2 words: Strategy and task type.”

    Thom McAlister, Tom Lewis, Matthias Räß, Seula Han, Shane Lanning, Sharifa Djurabaeva, and Phuong Tran

    Thom McAlister (ESL Instructor) and graduate students Tom Lewis, Matthias Raess, Seula Han, Shane Lanning, Sharifa Djurabaeva, and Phuong Tran

Emily Scalzo

  • Her poem, “An Offbeat Moment,” was published in the Summer 2014 issue of Third Wednesday. (print)
  • Her poem, “Growing Pains,” was published in Issue 15 (Summer 2014) of Midwestern Gothic. (print)
  • “90% of Americans Cannot Place the Philippines on a Map” was published in the Summer 2014 issue of Blue Collar Review. (print)
  • “Duplicity, or Why I Will Not Support Hillary for 2016” has been accepted at Blue Collar Review.

Ashley Ford

Elisabeth Buck (Ph.D Rhetoric and Composition ’16) published her first article: “‘The Average Piece of Junk is Probably More Meaningful than Our Criticism Designating it So’: Reading (Rhetorically) the Restaurant Review in Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille.” It was published in Food on Film: Bringing Something New to the Table. Ed. Tom Hertweck. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 3-17.

Ball State President Paul Ferguson and his wife Grace attend a performance of The Circus in Winter. (Photo provided by Cathy Day)

Ball State President Paul Ferguson and his wife Grace attend a performance of The Circus in Winter. (Photo provided by Cathy Day)

Cathy Day

  • She traveled to Connecticut to see the musical adaptation of her book The Circus in Winter.
  • A story that charts the history of the show–from the Virginia Ball Center in Muncie to Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut–made the front page of the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Pat Collier and Debbie Mix

  • Attended the Modernist Studies Association Conference in Pittsburgh (along with BSU alums Jeremy Carnes and Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and current grad student Jason Parks).
  • Collier delivered a paper entitled “Harold Monro and the Possibilities of Anthology Form.”
  • Mix presented a paper on lineages and legacies in 20th-century American women’s poetry and co-organized a roundtable called “Why Women’s Poetry Now?” 

Jill Christman’s book Borrowed Babies was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle alongside new e-books by Chris Abani, Christine Hodgen, & Vestal McIntyre.

IndyWritesBooksfrontcoverIndy Writes Books Event & Publication

  • English faculty Victoria Barrett, Cathy Day, Angela Jackson-Brown, and Lyn Jones were invited to submit works to Indy Writes Books: A Book Lover’s Anthology, which features work by other Indiana authors including Dan Wakefield, Susan Neville, and John Green.
  • All proceeds from Indy Writes Books support Indy Reads’ adult literacy programs in Central Indiana. You can purchase the book here.
  • On Friday, December 5 from 5pm – 9pm, Indy Reads Books on Mass Ave. in Indy will host a release party. Contributors will be on hand to sign books.

We always need more Good News