Summer has been a busy time for Ball State faculty, students, and alumni alike! Read more to find out what these Ball State affiliates have been up to.

Prof. Katy Didden earned a fellowship to attend the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Middlebury, VT. She will be co-facilitating a workshop with poet Alan Shapiro, giving a craft lecture on Marianne Moore and the Great Distance Poem, and giving a reading.

Dr. Paul Ranieri published a chapter titled “Standing the Test of Time: Liberal Education in a Jesuit Tradition” in Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies, edited by Cinthia Gannett and John C. Brereton, published early this summer by Fordham University Press.

Brittany Ulman, a senior Creative Writing student with minors in Professional Writing & Emerging Media and Spanish, completed her Summer Internship at International Floral Distributors. Brittany wrote several press releases and articles for IFD and its Flower Trends Forecast. She also worked on various projects aimed at enhancing distributor services for IFD’s vendor partners, including adding vendor partner display ads to the IFD websites. Additionally, Brittany participated in IFD committee and board meetings throughout the summer to acquire a better understanding of the industry. Finally, Brittany was often in charge of sending out the emails for the monthly updates for Flower Trends Forecast.

Dr. Lyn Jones was invited to speak on the Voice of the Performing Arts radio show. She was also a guest speaker at the Indianapolis Marion Public Community Library’s feature on the homeless where they debuted the Gere film Time Out of Mind. She spoke and fielded questions regarding the book she edited about Wheeler homeless women.

Alum Kiley Neal has accepted a position as a Content Writer/Social Media Specialist at Englin’s Fine Footwear.

Prof. Cathy Day’s essay “Not Like the Rest of Us” about sharing a hometown with Cole Porter was published in The Literary Hub and will be republished in an anthology of Indiana writers to celebrate Indiana’s bicentennial.

Prof. Cathy Day has two essays forthcoming in creative writing pedagogy anthologies. “Our Town: Teaching Creative Writing Students to Love Research and Collaboration” (in Creative Writing Innovations: Breaking Boundaries in the Classroom) emerged from her experience teaching ENG 444 Senior Seminar in Spring 2015. Students wrote linked stories set in a fictional Muncie called Middletown, and they made use of the famed Middletown archives in Bracken Library. “Where Are We Going in Creative Writing Pedagogy?” (in What We Talk About When We Talk about Creative Writing) was first published in 2010 in Fiction Writer’s Review.