spotlight
Akshya Saxena – Vernacular English
Feb. 22, 2022—Akshya Saxena, Assistant Professor of English, will be releasing her new book Vernacular English: Reading the Anglophone in Postcolonial India on March 1, 2022. You can see more info and buy her book here.
Margaret Renkl – Southern Book Prize for Nonfiction
Feb. 16, 2022—Congratulations to MFA visiting writer Margaret Renkl on her winning of the Southern Book Prize for nonfiction. Her book Graceland, At Last was awarded “the best Southern book of the year” among 1,500 nominations. More info about the award can be found here.
POETRY CONTEST: Unity & Democracy
Feb. 9, 2022—Vanderbilt students are invited to express how they feel about unity and democracy through a new poetry contest. The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy is holding the contest in partnership with the Department of English and Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program. The theme is “what unity through American democracy means to...
Jay Clayton on Arts Engines Podcast
Feb. 8, 2022—Jay Clayton, Professor of English and Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, appeared on the Arts Engines podcast. Arts Engines highlights the perspectives of the thought leaders and game-changers who are creating significant impact in the field of the arts. You can listen and watch here.
(2/8/2022) Virtual Event with Destiny O. Birdsong
Feb. 1, 2022—MFA alum Destiny O. Birdsong will be doing a virtual event with Parnassus in conversation with Vanderbilt poetry alum Stephanie Pruitt Gaines. This event will celebrate Destiny’s new book Nobody’s Magic, which comes out February 8th. This virtual event will take place Tuesday, February 8 at 6:30 PM CT. More event details can be found here.
Margaret Renkl – PEN Literary Award
Jan. 27, 2022—Congratulations to MFA Visiting Writer Margaret Renkl, who is among the long-list of writers eligible for the PEN Literary Awards. Margaret’s book Graceland: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South is up for the “PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay”. More information can be found here. Margaret will be giving a...
Best Essay in American Literature 2021 Award Recipient
Jan. 11, 2022—Congratulations to Vanderbilt-Alumni Katherine Fusco (University of Nevada) on winning the American Literature Society’s 1921 Prize for the Best Essay in American Literature. The essay, “Techniques of Justice: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits and the Problem of Visualizing the Race” written with Lynda C. Olman (University of Nevada) was in MELUS 46.3 in Fall 2021.
(4/7/2022) Aimee Bender, fiction reading: 7 PM, Virtual
Jan. 8, 2022— Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of...
(3/31/2022) Mark Jarman (faculty), poetry reading & Lorraine López (faculty), fiction reading: 7 PM, Buttrick Hall 101
Jan. 7, 2022—Mark Jarman was born in 1952 in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. He earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1976. Jarman is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Heronry (2017), Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems (2011), Epistles (2007), The Black...
(3/17/2022) Rebecca Bernard, fiction reading & Cara Dees, poetry reading: 7 PM, Buttrick Hall 101
Jan. 6, 2022—Rebecca Bernard’s debut collection of stories won the 2021 Non/Fiction prize from The Journal and is forthcoming from Ohio State’s Mad Creek Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Juked, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Fiction from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Vanderbilt University. Her work received notable...