From the Chair

Dear Colleagues, Coworkers, and Friends of the English Department,

Spring Break is over but the Equinox has passed and the days are getting longer, signaling summer on the horizon. We’ve still got a ways to go so please take some time to read through and celebrate our most recent awards and achievements. A special shout out to all the graduate students who won departmental awards. We’re honored to support your work.

Best

LG

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Faculty and Instructor Matters

Matt Brown’s book The Novel and the Blank was reviewed in the February 6, 2026 issue of TLS.

A new poem by Zara Chowdhary appeared in Seventh Wave Magazine.

Open Country Mag, published and founded by Otosirieze Obi-Young (Translation MFA and Department of English TA), recently published "The Rovingheights Bestseller List 2025", the first and only formal bestseller list in Nigeria, describing a story of what and how readers consume writing in an underreported but key section of global literature.

Donika Kelly received an Iowa Mid-Career Faculty Scholar Award.

Adam Hooks with Zack Lesser (UPenn) co-directs the Shakespeare Census (shakespearecensus.org), a digital project attempting to locate and describe extant copies of all editions of Shakespeare’s works through 1700. This project has just been awarded the British Shakespeare Association’s Innovation Award, commended thusly: "By supplying verified information in an open access format, the Census promotes copy-specific scholarship on Shakespeare's early printed works and supports editorial and bibliographical analyses of the same. The BSA Innovation Award is one of those rare opportunities where we are able to acknowledge the importance of digital scholarship and online resources like Shakespeare Census to our work as editors and scholars of Shakespeare.”

Loren Glass’s essay, “Close Third:  The Narrative Formation of Modern Intersubjectivity,” is featured as the lead article in the Spring 2026 issue of Critical Inquiry.

Graduate Student Matters

Adare Smith (PhD) was featured in Penn Today and The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Tove Conway (PhD)'s article, "Imaginary Entomology: The In(k)-sect-Blots of Gisèle Prassinos," was published in Feminist Modernist Studies.

Adam Witte (NWP) is the recipient of the NWP's spring Herodotus Award, selected by Kristen Radtke. Adam’s submission, “Pogonostication,” was described by Radtke as “a searching, beautiful essay that braids beards, fathers, and The Odyssey into a radiant and often funny meditation on how boys learn what to believe about men, and how those beliefs quietly break."

Darius Stewart (PhD)'s essays "In the Wake" and "The Risk Object" will be published in the spring 2026 issues of Colorado Review and Bat City Review, respectively.

Of departmental awards, Thelma Trujillo (PhD) was awarded the Valerie Lagorio Dissertation Fellowship, Jennie Sekanics (PhD) was awarded the Prairie Lights/Sherman Paul Dissertation Research Fellowship; Sarah Frank (PhD) was awarded the Dietz Poetry Essay Prize for "The Modernist Infrapoetics of the Brooklyn Bridge: Hart Crane & Marianne Moore"; Margaret Bowlin (PhD) was awarded the Frederick P. W. McDowell Dissertation Fellowship and selected as the Blough Dissertation Fellow for 2026-27.

From the Graduate College, Jamie Chen (PhD) and Sydnee Brown (PhD) were awarded Graduate Tuition Scholarships for Summer 2026; Eliza Levinson (NWP), Ese Emmanuel (NWP) and Jacob Fidoten (NWP) were awarded MFA Summer Fellowships for Summer 2026; Ellie White (PhD), Jamie Chen (PhD), and Sarah Frank (PhD) were awarded the Graduate College Summer Fellowships for Summer 2026; and Cary Stough (PhD) was awarded the Graduate College Post-Comprehensive Research Award for Fall 2026.

Alumni Matters

Brianna Jett (BA 2016)'s first novel, Under a Carnivore Sky, will be published in May by Page Street Publishing.

Other Matters

Your matters for the next issue of Reading Matters are gratefully received by March 30.