In the latest installment of our Recommended Reads series Professor Sean Lovelace recommends Coming into the Country by John McPhee. Author John McPhee is a technician, from the micro to the macro. He is a meticulous architect, with a keen emphasis on structure, but he’s the type of designer that bends the boundaries, a Frank […]

Each year, Ball State University honors one of its faculty members with the Outstanding Creative Endeavor Award. We are proud to announce that this year the award has been given to our very own Associate Professor of English Sean Lovelace. To read a full write up about Professor Lovelace’s recent award on BSU’s website, click […]

I was most excited for the second day of the Slash Pine Poetry Festival. My nerves were operating at a low hum, as I didn’t have to read, and had logged a day’s worth of experience in Alabama, so I could operate the whole day with just my wonder gaze on. The belly full of […]

The Slash Pine Poetry Festival is organized and executed by a mix of University of Alabama faculty, interns, and students. On March 31st of this year, four creative writing undergraduate students, including myself, descended on Tuscaloosa, Alabama to fulfill our part of a literary exchange with the University of Alabama. We were chaperoned by creative […]

This is the second post of our “Good News” series—a series to highlight the accomplishments of the English Department’s graduate students and faculty. Here’s what they’ve been up to: Adam R. Beach’s essay “Global Slavery, Old World Bondage, and Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer,” was accepted for publication in Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and will appear in […]

February 21 and 22, the University of Alabama faculty/writer Brian Oliu and four Alabama undergraduate writers will visit Ball State University to exchange ideas about creative writing, visit our Creative Writing in the Community program, and also visit the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry. On Tuesday night, February 22, BSU will host a […]

Before my employment as an English professor I had another career: RN, Registered Nurse. In nursing, writing was not only necessary; it was at the core of our very system of accountability. One key statement was hammered into students during nursing school, the same doctrine practiced every day as a working nurse: “If it wasn’t […]

Looking for a way to round out your first week? Well, we’ve got a couple of events that should help. This Friday, January 14th, Professor Cathy Day will read from her memoir Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love. The event will be held at the E.B. & Bertha C. Ball […]

Christopher Newgent graduated from Ball State with a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing in 2006. Newgent puts his degree to use trying to improve his city environment of Indianapolis by bringing independent literature to the public at art and music events. He generously agreed to share those experiences with us here at the English Department […]

You might be asking yourself two things: how in the world did they let you back on here, Tyler Gobble? And what in the world is a chapbook? I can’t really answer the first one, but the second one I’m gonna try. Avoiding the long history of the chapbook, the way it developed, its historical […]