Recent Faculty Publications and Awards

Jana Braziel’s latest book, Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora, has just been published by Indiana University Press.  Congratulations on this excellent publication, Jana!

Congrats to Beth Ash, winner of the Boyce Teaching Award in the Tenured/Tenure-Track Category!

Congrats to Bill Zipfel, winner of the Boyce Teaching Award in the Field Service/Adjunct Category!

Brock Clarke just published an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Check it out here. Congratulations Brock!

Joanie Mackowski has just won the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America for her poem, “Lightning Eased:  Dream.” Congrats Joanie!

Kevin Oberlin's terrific chapbook Spotlit Girl, winner of last year's Wick Poetry Chapbook Award, is just out from Kent State University Press. It's a sequence of sonnets--"little A-list marvels of craft," as Molly Peacock calls them, tracing the fortunes of a young jazz singer from Texas trying to make it in the music business. Roll over, Phil Sidney! Check out the book here. Bravo, Kevin!

James M. Green, MA 2007 and current UC comp instructor, has been racking up good news. His poem, "Cummins's Eleven," won Poemeleon's Mystery Box contest. James' chapbook, Super Rich, which includes "Cummins's Eleven," has been accepted for publication in the Pudding House Chapbook Series from Pudding House Publications, the same fine outfit that produced Josh Butt's Learning to Fingerpick Guitar. Check out his poem here.

Beverly Brannan's Habitat for Humanity class is receiving a lot of attention, including a recent mention in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Brock Clarke's new book, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, received an extremely positive review in the New York Times from Janet Maslin. Read the review here.

Kathryn Rentz, associate professor of English, joined the authoring team of Ray Lesikar and Marie Flatley for "Business Communication: Making Connections in a Digital World." See the full interview here.

LaWanda Walters's poem "Her Art," which appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of The Antioch Review, has been chosen by Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey for the Best New Poets anthology. It was published by Meridian magazine, from the University of Virginia, in November. The editors of The Antioch Review nominated LaWanda's poem, which is featured here.

Jim Braziel, adjunct assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature, has had his book titled Birmingham, 35 Miles published! Congratulations! Check out the book here.

Jay Twomey recieved the 2007 Carl Mills Award for Outstanding Faculty & Student Relations.

John Drury, professor of English and Comparative Literature, received the 2007 George Rieveschl Jr. Award for Creative and/or Scholarly Works. In addition, his book-length sequence of poems, The Refugee Camp, won the prestigious Paris Review Prize in Poetry and will be published by Zoo Press.

Elissa Sonnenberg, field service assistant professor of journalism, was a finalist in the 2007 National City and Regional Magazine Awards competition, for work she did as editor of the summer 2006 issue of Cincinnati Wedding. Seventy-three judges representing 35 publications, including Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, O, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Glamour, Marie Claire and Gourmet and journalism scholars from the Missouri School of Journalism selected the finalists. Cincinnati Wedding was a finalist in the new category of ancillary publications, nominated alongside publications including St. Louis magazine and Palm Springs Life.

Congratulations, Len Penix! His website for the Kentucky Post took second place in its class in the general excellence category in the 2006 Kentucky Newspapers Contest. The contest is sponsored by the Kentucky Press Association, which made the announcement during its awards banquet in Louisville. In addition to being a field service assistant professor of journalism, Len is also the director for UC's News Record.

Pink Triangles and Rainbow Dreams, a collection of essays by John A. Maddux, was published in 2007 by Boson Books in Raleigh, N.C. It is comprised of 50 essays dealing with gay and lesbian issues. John is a field service assistant professor of English.

Jana Braziel has three forthcoming monographs: An Introduction to Diaspora (Blackwell, 2007); Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2008); and Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds (SUNY, 2008).

Lisa Maria Hogeland is co-general editor of The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume II: 20th Century, which will be published Aunt Lute Books. (Volume I: 17th through 19th Centuries was published in 2004). The 1,400-page volume includes 250 writers in a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, drama, memoir and nonfiction.

Deb Meem's book Finding Out: LGBT History, Politics, and Culture (co-authored with Michelle Gibson and Jonathan Alexander) will be published by Sage Press in 2008. She is co-editor (with Lisa Hogeland) of The Aunt Lute Anthology U.S. Women Writers, Volume II, 20th Century, and is under contract with Valancourt Books to prepare an edition of Eliza Lynn Linton's 1851 novel Realities.

Laura Micciche's recent book, Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, Teaching, foregrounds the idea that emotions are something we do, rather than something we have. She explores the implications of this claim in the context of writing classrooms, administrative structures, and the formation of disciplinary identity.

Lee Person has recently published The Cambridge Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne (Cambridge UP, 2007) and A Historical Guide to James Fenimore Cooper (Oxford UP, 2007). His Norton Critical Edition, The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings (2005), has sold more than 50,000 copies.

Jim Schiff's book, Updike in Cincinnati, was recently published, as were interviews with Julian Barnes and Jeffrey Eugenides (Missouri Review). Previously published interviews with Michael Cunningham and George Saunders will soon be reprinted, respectively, in the British paperback version of The Hours, and in a Tin House anthology titled The World Within. Schiff is working on a book on literary retellings and will be speaking at the Reynolds Price Jubilee at Duke University.

Lucille Schultz has been named a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric (SWR) book series, published by Southern Illinois UP. Her second book in that series, Archives of Instruction (with J. Carr and S. Carr), won the 2006 Mina Shaughnessy Award from the Modern Language Association. For the forthcoming (spring 2008) Beyond the Archives, edited by Gesa Kirsch and Liz Rohan, Schultz has written the foreword.

Jay Twomey is delivering papers on the Bible and American political theology at the Midwest MLA Convention and the Society of Biblical Literature meetings. He will be running a three-day seminar on the messianic in literature and theory at the American Comparative Literature Association meeting in 2008. Recent articles are forthcoming in The Journal of Religion and Theatre and in an edited collection on lesser-known biblical women to be published by Sheffield Phoenix Press. His book, The Pastoral Epistles through the Centuries, will be published by Blackwell Press in 2008.