Chronicle of Higher Education Publishes Article
October 30, 2009
Professor Bill Pannapacker's article, "Preserving the Future of Natural-History Museums" was published by the Chronicle of Higher Education this month.

Poem to be Published
October 16, 2009
Laura Donnelly's long poem, "Nocturne: Schumann's Letters" will be published by Finishing Line Press as a chapbook. She is delighted that this poem found such a fine home. Donnelly just completed her PhD exams.

Former Student Featured on Poetry Daily
October 10, 2009
Chris Dombrowski himself and his book and one of his poems were featured on Saturday on Poetry Daily, one of if not the major site for poetry. Here's the link: http://poems.com/feature.php?date=14528

Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education
October 5, 2009
Professor Bill Pannapacker has an article featured in October's Chronicle of Higher Education. You can check it out here: http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Middlebrow/48644/

Fulbright Teaching Fellowship
September 17, 2009
Our grad Dani Johnson has received a Fulbright teaching fellowship and is now teaching in Spain.

Alum Accepted to Murray State
September 16, 2009
Our grad Jennifer (Stults) Dykema has been accepted to the low residency MFA program at Murray State.

Poetry Collection Published
September 14, 2009
Katie Bode-Lang's collection, Spring Melt, has been published by Seven Kitchens Press, publisher of "fine contemporary poetry and fiction chapbooks." Her collection was selected by poet and professor of English at Bucknell, G. C. Waldrep who wrote of her poems "These are poems of deep quiet, meditations on identity and personhood that proclaim the physical world is all we have while simultaneously insisting there is, must be, something more, a dimension of human contact and fealty that transcends the daily tragedy and furniture of our lives." Katie is on the English/Creative Writing faculty at Penn State.

Excerpt in New York Times Magazine
September 12, 2009
Rhoda (Janzen) Burton had an excerpt from her book, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, appear in New York Times Magazine.

Article Publication
September 11, 2001
Kathleen Verduin's essay "Imprinting Mortality: Updike's Anxiety and the Culture of Books" has been accepted for publication in the Modern Language Quarterly. Also, her "Emerson, Dante, and American Nationalism" has been approved for inclusion in Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century, to be published by Oxford UP.

Faculty Addresses the Class of 2013
September 9, 2009
Peter Schakel gave the convocation address "A Boy Called Eustace and a Hope Education" this past Sunday.

Article to be Published in Teaching Professor
September 9, 2009
Barb Mezeske's "The Graduate Revisited: Not 'Plastics' but 'Metacognition'" will appear in the October issue of Teaching Professor. Barb's earlier article in Teaching and Learning, "Values Surveys: LinkingCourse Content and Students' Lives" was posted on the Faculty Focus listserv in mid-August.

Nashville Tomato Art Fest Winner
September 9, 2009
Graduate Amy Hall won the humor category in Nashville's Tomato Art Fest's "Hot Tomato Haiku Contest." Over 400 entries were submitted and judged by Belmont University English professors.

Graduate Article on Professor in Grand Rapids Magazine
September 1, 2009
Click here to see the article written by Matthew Baker about Professor Bill Pannapacker's upcoming book.

Hope Professor Featured in OpEd
August 17, 2009
Professor Ernest Cole has a featured OpEd article in the Holland Sentinel. This article is a result of his recent grant that took him to his native Sierra Leone for scholarly work.

Internship News
August 15, 2009
Hope grad Allison Rivers has been hired for an internship at C & R Press, publishers of fine works of literature. Congratulations to Allison!

Poet Jack Ridl Featured in Local News
August 9, 2009
Jack Ridl has been featured in the Grand Rapids Press and the Holland Sentinel in regards to his upcoming book, Losing Season. Extensive interviews and photos can be found online. Congratulations, Jack!

Former Hope Student Earns Internship
August 9, 2009
Maria Awan just heard that she will have an internship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for the fall semester. The scholar she will be working with (Christopher Candland, from Wellesley) is doing a project on Pakistan, so it will be perfect for her--and he's delighted to have a native speaker of Urdu.

Hope Grad Accepted to Teach for America
August 6, 2009
Starting this fall, Kristi Orange will teach in Greater New Orleans, bringing new energy and leadership to the challenge of closing the academic acheivement gap for students in low-income communities. Kristi was selected from a record 35,000 individuals who applied for Teach For America this year and will join nearly 4,100 new corps members teaching in 35 regions across the country.

English Alum to Start Doctoral Study
June 8, 2009
Leslie Aronson, who graduated in 2003, went on to earn a Master's at Colorado and has been accepted for doctoral study at both Glasgow and Edinburgh. She plans to start at Edinburgh this fall.

William Stafford Research Fellow
May 28, 2009
Here's some good news from our former colleague John Fiedler. John has been invited to be a "William Stafford Research Fellow" at Lewis & Clark this summer. He will be working under Kim Stafford.

Alum to Teach at Cornell
May 13, 2009
Elizabeth Anker (1996) has landed a position (specialty in post-colonial literature) at Cornell University! Congraulations!

Princton Divinity Degree
May 11, 2009
English major alumnus Matthew Nickel will graduate with a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary this month. He has been called to First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor and is engaged to be married.

Teaching Positions Awarded
May 11, 2009
Our grads Rebecca Miller and Glenn Lester have signed contracts for faculty positions. Rebecca will be at Defiance College and Glenn will be at UNC Greensboro.

Former Student to Begin Residency
May 6, 2009
Our former student Stephanie Judd is moving on to a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan after earning her medical degree at Wayne State.Congratulations to Dr. Judd!

Two Students Honored by 2009 Conference on Christianity and Liaterature
May 6, 2009
Our friend Susanna Childress, Director of the 2009 Conference on Christianity and Literature Creative Writing Contest, notified me that two of our students have won awards in this national conference:

Grace Olson won first prize in the nonfiction category for her essay "Forsythia: An Incantation."

Karis Granberg-Michelson won awards in two categories: second place in nonfiction for "Institution Daisies" and first prize in poetry for a group of three poems: "Spark," "Casualities," and "Balsam."

Thesis Recognition
May 4, 2009
Hope grad Amanda Dykstra received the award for most outstanding thesis during the awards ceremony at Emerson!

Grad Accepted for Teach for America
April 22, 2009
Kristi Orange was accepted into the Teach For America corps this year! As of June 9, 2009, she will be relocating to New Orleans, LA to teach secondary english and special education.

Graduate School Acceptance
April 20, 2009
Emily Wilson, a Hope English grad, has been accepted to do graduate work at Loyola University in Chicago and will be starting in the fall.

New Book Contract
April 20, 2009
Heather Sellers has signed a contract with Writer's Digest for The Nighttime Novelist, due out in 2010. Writer's Digest invited Heather to submit a proposal for the book--a fine tribute to the success of her previous books with that press.

Professor's Review Published
April 20, 2009
Ernest Cole's review of the book Understanding Cry, the Beloved Country has been published in The Journal of the African Literature Association. Ernest has just returned from Burlington, Vermont, where he presented two papers at the 35th Annual Conference of the African Literature Association.

Student Receives Assistantship
April 13, 2009
Lauren Stacks, currently enrolled in the Roosevelt University MFA program, received a new Graduate Assistant position. This position comes with high compliemtns from the head of the program on Lauren's work thus far.

New Publication!
April 13, 2009
Cheers to Kim Douglas, on the publication of her memoir, High Desert: A Journey of Survival and Hope. The book has been called "a courageous, gripping, and deeply personal autobiographical account about growing up in an abusive home and finding a path to recovery by learning how to rely on faith and spiritual beliefs to heal and grow...."

Faculty Featured on CBS Morning
April 13, 2009
Congratulations to Bill Pannapacker, on his appearance yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning. You can watch the segment by clicking here.

Former Student Earns Doctorate
April 13, 2009
Rachael (Pridgeon) Peckham successfully defended her thesis on Friday and is now Dr. Rachael Peckham.

Hope Grad Named Editor
April 13, 2009
Laura Donnelly has been named editor of Third Coast, one of the finer literary magazines.

Review of New Collection
April 6, 2009
Here's a wonderfully celebratory and insightful review of our Chris Dombrowski's new collection. Review of By Cold Water

Saturday's Verse Daily
April 6, 2009
Jack Ridl has a poem on Saturday's Verse Daily.

Presentations at 12th Annual C.S. Lewis Conference
April 3, 2009
Peter Schakel, presented the opening keynote address ("Dinosaurs, Dragons, and Destiny: The Inklings and Old Western Culture"), the banquet address ("A Dinosaur in Narnia"), and participated on the closing panel discussion at the 12th annual conference of The C.S. Lewis and the Inklings Society. The meeting was held last weekend at Calvin College.

Curtis Gruenler also presented at the same conference. His paper was titled "C.S. Lewis and Rene Girard on Myth: The Case of Til We Have Faces." Curtis was a member of the organizing committee of the conference.

Charles Huttar, also a member of the organizing committee, presented "What Lewis Really Did to 'Cupid and Psyche'" and participated on the closing panel discussion.

The C.S. Lewis conference was supported in part by grants from our department, our dean, and our provost.

Acceptance to Writing Programs
March 30, 2009
Corrie Smith has been accepted to the writing programs at Murray State and at Minnesota Mankato.

More Acceptance News
March 30, 2009
Rob Kenagy has been accepted at The New School and is at the top of the wait list at Virginia Tech. He has also been accepted to the MFA program at Virginia Tech.

Faculty Receives NEH Summer Fellowship
March 26, 2009
Congratulations to Julie Kipp, who has been awarded a five-week NEH Summer Fellowship to participate in the seminar at Notre Dame on Anglo-Irish Identities. Julie has also been named the Acting Director of the Women's Studies Program next year while Annie Dandavati is in Japan.

Students Participate in Undergraduate Research Celebration
March 26, 2009
Nate Johnson, Andrew Gehl, and Laura Shears, English majors will present their work on Friday afternoon from 2:30-4:30 pm during the Celebration of Undergraduate Research in the Devos Fieldhouse. Please attend if you can to support these outstanding students.

Faculty/Student Reading
March 26, 2009
Heather Sellers and Krista Mehari, who, in a form of faculty-student collaborative work that is distinctive to our creative writing program, will present a joint reading of their recent writing projects at Literary Life Bookstore in Grand Rapids on April 9.

Alum to Defend Dissertation
March 23, 2009
Rachael Pridgeon Peckham will be defending her dissertation on April 10. She also deserves congratulations on her new tenure-track position in creative writing at Marshall U.

More Grad School Admissions
March 23, 2009
Corrie Smith has been accepted to the MFA program at Western Michigan.
and
Grad Sally Smits has been teaching at University of Indiana/South Bend and was recently accepted to graduate school at UNC Greensboro.

Alum’s Poem Finalist
March 23, 2009
Our grad Allyson Boggess's poem "Citrus" is a finalist for the anthology: Best of the Net along with such poets as Bob Hicok, Lucia Perillo, Marvin Bell, John Yau, and Alberto Rios.

Hope Student Accepted to MFA Program
March 11, 2009
Rob Kenagy has been accepted to The Art Institute of Chicago's MFA program and to the program at Northern Michigan where he was awarded a full fellowship. Also added to the list of acceptances are Butler and Columbia College.

Faculty Awarded Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
March 10, 2009
Jennifer Young, who has been appointed an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Huntington Memorial Library in San Marino, CA. Her one-month residency can occur any time between June 2009 and June 2010. These are VERY competitive fellowships, and it is a huge credit to Jennifer's many accomplishments in Phillis Wheatley studies that she has received this award. Those of you who have been to the Huntington know the pleasures that await her--the gardens, the art collection, the amazing library. What a great fellowship to land!

You can visit the Huntington here:
http://www.huntington.org/default.aspx
Click on the library tab.

Hope Grad Defends MFA Thesis
March 9, 2009
This past Friday Meggie Elliot successfully defended her MFA thesis, titled "Half a House: Poems of Nova Scotia."

Student Accepted to Simmons College
March 3, 2009
Nicole Brugger was accepted to the Simmons College of Arts and Sciences for their dual degree MA-Children's Literature/MFA-Writing for Children program and to the program at Hollins.

Faculty Awarded Summer Research Fellowship
March 2, 2009
Jennifer Young received word today that she has been awarded a Summer Research Fellowship from the Indiana University African Studies Institute. She will do research on narratives about Liberia in William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator.

Interview Available as Podcast
March 2, 2009
Natalie Dykstra's interview at Emerson College is now a podcast, available here: http://acoustictypewriter.com/

English Student Accepted to New England School
March 2, 2009
Nicole Brugger has been accepted to Vermont College of Fine Arts.

MFA Acceptance
March 2, 2009
Rob Kenagy has been accepted to the MFA program in poetry at The University of New Mexico. They made special mention of how much they admired his work.

Graduate School News
February 23, 2009

• Elena Valle has been accepted into the fiction program at Washington University.
• Kristina Martinez just received word that she has been accepted into The University of Wisconsin Madison School of Library and Information Studies.

Congratulations to Hope Student Poets
February 11, 2009
Last week we learned that Gray Emerson earned a place in the anthology 25 Under 25, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye. Now we've learned that a total of NINE Hope poets will be in the book. Joining Gray will be Allison Rivers, Anna West, Lauren Eriks, Brianne Carpenter, Emily Wegemer Hendren, Lauren Stacks, Jonah Ogles, and Matt Baker. This is a huge tribute to our creative writing program, to the achievements of our students, and to the quality of Hope poet-teacher-mentors.

Grad School Admissions
February 11, 2009
Matt Baker has been admitted to MFA programs at Alabama, Florida State, and Vanderbilt. These are all top-tier programs--great news for Matt, and a ratification of the remarkable talent many of us have seen in his writing.

Alumni publication
February 11, 2009
Matthew Fike, a graduate of Hope currently teaching at Winthrop University, has published A Jungian Study of Shakespeare: The Visionary Mode. (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009). Among the mentors Matthew thanks in his Acknowledgments are John Cox and Charles Huttar. Matthew's earlier book was Spenser's Underworld in the 1590 Faerie Queene; his PhD is from University of Michigan.

Memoir Published in Studies in Medievalism
January 29, 2009
Congrautlations to Kathleen Verduin, on the publication of her memoir "The Founding and the Founder: Medievalism and the Legacy of Leslie J. Workman," appearing in Studies in Medievalism XVII. The essay is appended, for those who remember Kathleen's husband Leslie, and especially for those who never had the privilege to know him.

Article in Teaching Classroom
January 29, 2009
Congratulations to David Klooster, Patricia Bloem, and co-author Alison Preece (University of Victoria), on the publication of "Many Voices in the Classroom: The Role of Classroom Talk in Education for Democracy" in Thinking Classroom (simultaneously published in Russian as Peremena), vol. 9, no. 4 (October 2008). The article is a revision and expansion of a conference talk Jesse Montano and Richard Mezeske heard Pat give on our behalf in Tallin, Estonia, several years back, and includes observations from our work in the Czech Republic, Armenia, Macedonia, and Guatemala.

Hope English Major Chosen As Finalist
January 15, 2009
Congratulations to Krista Mehari, chosen as one of 20 semifinalists for the 2008 Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest. Given by the Ayn Rand Institute, Mehari was chosen from over 1,900 entries.

Press Releases About English

Click here to see 2008 News