Columbus State University Department of English

We’re excited about this news from our recent graduate Najee Fareed. Check out his appearance on Good Morning America. Well done, Najee!

This headline is: GREAT NEWS! The Saber Wins National Pacemaker Award The Saber won a Pacemaker Award at the Associated Collegiate Press Convention last week, for its March 2020 issue. Also known as the Pulitzer Prize for college media, the Pacemaker is the top national award a college newspaper can win. Layout Editor Jade Thornton and Media Editor Luka Steele also received honorable mention in the Cartoon of the Year category for four-year colleges. ... Congratulations to our amazing student journalists!

This headline is: GREAT NEWS! The Saber Wins National Pacemaker Award The Saber won a Pacemaker Award at the Associated Collegiate Press Convention last week, for its March 2020 issue. Also known as the Pulitzer Prize for college media, the Pacemaker is the top national award a college newspaper can win. Layout Editor Jade Thornton and Media Editor Luka Steele also received honorable mention in the Cartoon of the Year category for four-year colleges. ... Congratulations to our amazing student journalists!

We're pleased to announce the Northwoods & Donald Jordan Reading Series, a partnership between the Northwoods Writing Conference at Bimidji State University and the Creative Writing Program at Columbus State University. The series was formed to provide authors with the opportunities to read from their latest work so that students and the public could have safe alternative events to attend. All of the readings are free and open to the public, but you need to preregister for Zoom admittance via the series website. https://sites.google.com//northwoods-readi/upcoming-events

A fantastic reading and discussion of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 by English professor Dr. Patrick Jackson! Catch-22 is one of Dr. Jackson’s favorite novels, and it has been banned many times. #happybannedbooksweek https://youtu.be/oZ9JMP7TtMI

Many thanks to Danielle Coutts for celebrating Banned Books Week with us by reading a passage from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian! #bannedbooksweek https://youtu.be/1TuV5xp46BU

Thank you to Dr. Scott Wilkerson for this delightful reading of Thomas Pynchon’s banned and dangerous book Gravity’s Rainbow! #happybannedbooksweek https://youtu.be/79AvrlRoorA

Happy Banned Books Week from Sigma Tau Delta, CSU’s chapter of the International English Honor Society! This year, we’re celebrating Banned Books Week a little differently and have asked students and faculty to send in videos of them reading a short passage from their favorite banned book. We will be posting these videos throughout the week, and to kick things off, we have a reading of passages from Fanny Hill (John Cleland, 1748) by English major Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson. #BannedBooksWeek https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HalkKv0yr90

Calling all English majors and faculty!The theme for this year's Banned Books Week event is a Choose Your Own Adventure (Virtual) Read-Out! We invite you to record yourself reading a short passage (5 minutes or less) from your favorite banned book. Then we’ll share it via English Department and Sigma Tau Delta social media sites during Banned Books Week. Send your videos into [email protected] by Friday, September 25. Banned Book Week is September 27 - October 3.... Don’t know what to read? Check out Beyond Magenta -- and the associated programming by the CSU Schwob Library!

Tomorrow is Day 1! Are you ready? Wear your mask, be kind, and please... read the syllabus.

We mourn the loss of our colleague and friend Dr. Dan Ross, even as we celebrate his life.

We’re delighted to report that 2018 graduate Zach Lamb’s novel The Suicide Killer will be be published later this year by Darkstroke Books. Zach says of his characters that they are as flawed and broken as the people we see everyday in the mirror and inhabit the grey areas of life as it actually lived. Zach has an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Well done, Zach!

Dear Colleagues, Students, Friends: I hope you’ll check out the most recent episode of the podcast, the Carson McCullers Center’s Weekly We of Me, featuring part one of our interview with Natalia Temesgen: On Writing for ‘Dear White People’ in the Age of Black Lives Matter. It’s available on Spotify and elsewhere, but here’s a direct link to the episode: https://d3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net//90156099-44100-2-8b... I’m hoping everyone will consider using the podcast as a resource in the classroom. The first spate of interviews (with Natalia, founding McC Ctr director Carlos Dews, novelist and gay rights activist Sarah Schulman, local slam champion and writing mentor Jonathan S.E. Perkins, and actor/director Karen Allen) focus on topics such as cultural appropriation, intersectionality, gender identity and sexual orientation, Black Lives Matter, and, of course, the life and work of Carson McCullers. Also, anyone interested in having students work on content for the podcast as a class, honors, or student club project, please let me know. Dr. Nick Norwood Director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians Professor of English Columbus State University 706 565 1212 www.mccullerscenter.org www.nick-norwood.com

We’re delighted to share the following news about our 2018 graduate, Toni Stauffer: The Alabama Press Association has honored Toni with two awards for her work as a full-time general news reporter at The Citizen of East Alabama newspaper, located in Phenix City. She received third place in the category Best News Feature Story Coverage for her feature "Opening up about suicide" and accompanying article "Suicide increasing for ages 15-24." Along with her editor, Denise DuBois, she was awarded second place in the category Best In-Depth News Story for "Tornado rips through Smiths Station, Beauregard," which consisted of several articles published in a series with photos. Congratulations, Toni!

Alumni Spotlight: Amanda Black, Creative Writing Minor, c/o 2017 Back in February in Los Angeles, Professor Temesgen got dinner with Amanda Black '17, Theatre Arts major and Creative Writing minor. Amanda is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at University of Southern California and actively developing new plays in Los Angeles and beyond. It was great for Amanda and her former professor to re-connect in person and talk about current creative projects over a coupl...e of bowls of pho. Amanda's one-act play "Aunt Katrina" was developed in classrooms at CSU, then workshopped in Atlanta at the Horizon Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival. It went on to be a third place contender in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for playwriting. Last fall, Amanda's play "Lemonade" debuted at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as part of "Climate Change Theatre Action."

Please join the First Year Composition program and Academic Center for Tutoring in congratulating our 2020 Writing Award winners! These awards celebrate student writing both in the FYC program and across the curriculum. Outstanding Teacher of Writing 2020: Prof. Mary Dawson Outstanding ENGL 1101 Essay Award 2020: Danielle Gotch (teacher Dr. Rebecca Gerdes-McClain)... Outstanding ENGL 1102 Essay Award 2020: Timothy Saabu (teacher Dr. Shannon Godlove) Listen to our award winners and their teachers reflect on the awards and what they mean to them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8BQkC0PLsY