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

Prof. Jill Christman has three essays coming out this month:

Oct-15-Cover-FINAL-819x1024“The Eleven-Minute Crib Nap” will be released in a new literary anthology about all things baby on Oct. 5th, Oh Baby!: True Stories About Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love edited by Lee Gutkind and published by In Fact Books. Creative Nonfiction is giving away 23 copies of the book through their site & Goodreads is giving away 20 copies here.

“Burned Images” appears in Scars: An Anthology, edited by Erin Wood and published by Et Alia Books (October 2015)

“Leading the Children Out of Town” is online in the Fall 2015 issue of Brain, Child magazine.

Dr. Jackie Grutsch-McKinney was recently elected to the International Writing Center Association Executive Board. She will assume the position of Vice President in November at NCTE, serving for two years in that role, followed by two years as President, and then two years as Past-President.

Dr. Robert D. Habich published the review-essay “Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, and Transcendentalism” in American Literary Scholarship 2013: An Annual, ed. Gary Scharnhorst (Duke University Press, 2015), pp. 3-21.  American Literary Scholarship contains commissioned chapters that evaluate the year’s criticism and scholarship on a variety of American authors.

Prof. Silas Hansen was recently notified that one of his essays was listed as notable in Best American Essays 2015.

Sarah Isaacson and Alicia Miller, both IEI graduate assistants, received an Aspire Grant for their presentation, “Benefits of Electronic Textbooks on Second Language Literacy Development.” They presented at the Second Language Research Forum from October 29 to October 31, 2015 in Atlanta, GA.

Dr. Lyn Jones spent her summer working with the Wheeler Mission Ministries Center for Women and Children in Indianapolis, where she collected women’s stories for a memoir titled, Where Mercy and Truth Meet: Women of Wheeler Speak. Dan sbw_wheeler_mission_writing_center_blog_threeCarpenter, the former and long time editor of the Indy Star, wrote a wonderful article praising the memoir, which can be read here. English education major Rita Mitchell and recent BSU English graduate Elizabeth Wilkes helped Dr. Jones with this project. Jones also presented at these conferences:

“Worlding: Rewriting the World and the Word in Disability Studies,” Diversity Research Symposium, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, Submitted June 2015, Accepted September 2015, Presented October 24, 2015

 “Self-Publishing Student’s Work from the Writing Classroom: How to, Why, Outcomes,” (with Michael Baumann, Ph.D. Rhet/Comp Student at the University of Louisville), Indiana Teachers of Writing, Indianapolis, IN, Submitted June 2015, Accepted August 2015, Presented September 26, 2015

Prof. Craig O’Hara‘s flash fiction piece, “Terminal Lounge,” is now out in the fall issue of Phychopomp magazine. It’s available online here.

Amory Orchard had an essay come out in the national undergraduate nonfiction magazine, Thoreau’s Rooster, last month.

Dr. Emily Rutter recently won the South Atlantic Review Best Essay Prize for her essay “the story usually being’: Revising the Posthumous Legacy of  Huddie Ledbetter in Tyehimba Jess’s leadbelly.” SAMLA will award her a cash prize at its annual conference in November. She also presented “‘this is how you are a citizen’: Documenting Racial Trauma in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric” at the Issues in Critical Investigation Biennial Symposium on the African Diaspora at Vanderbilt University.