The wood type shown on the cover is 20 pica French Clarendon, part of a collection donated to Knox by Harry (Hal) Keiner ’67. Rummaging through that drawer, Nick Regiacorte spelled out “Fiftieth,” and added an exclamation point. Kelly Clare ’16 chose the only visible lead type, a ‘k, n, o,’ and an ‘x,’ all Bodoni, from Seymour Library’s collection. Ami Jontz framed the edges with a beautiful ‘S’ and ampersand. Then, Kelly, finally, locked it all up tight for printing.
Support for the 50th anniversary of the Program in Creative Writing has been provided by the Knox College Department of English, the John and Elaine Fellowes Fund, the Caxton Club, the Cultural Events Committee, the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, the Office of the President, and the Offices of Admission, Advancement, Alumni Relations, and Communications.
REFLECTIONS ON OUR HISTORY By Robin Metz, Director of the Program in Creative Writing and Philip Sidney Post Professor of English The history of creative writing at Knox College likely dates back to the 1920s when Professor Proctor Fenn Sherwin began offering creative writing courses and the first literary magazine was published on campus. But the historical roots may run even deeper in the Galesburg community—to the creative writing workshops Lombard College professor Philip Green Wright held in his home and which launched the writing career of Galesburg native Carl Sandburg. In any event, Knox and Galesburg have long attracted and nurtured aspiring writers, including Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Eugene Field, S.S. McClure, Dorothea Tanning, Jack Finney, to mention a few who gained national and international prominence by mid-20th century. Moreover, since the 1950s, the tradition has continued, as literally hundreds of Knox writers have achieved widespread acclaim. It’s tempting to suggest it must be something in the water! But the truth is both more grounded and more profound: rather early in its history, the Knox Community (by which I mean the faculty, students, administration, and alumni body) developed a vision of, and commitment to, the importance of imaginative expression as an integral element in the flourishing of mind, emotion, and spirit, as well as the relationship of selfhood to the interwoven communities (human and biotic) of the constructed and natural environment, a benefit of the creative process often referred to as “empathic extension.” In 1946, Professor Howard Wilson joined the Knox faculty and, as chair of the English department, hired (in 1953) Sam Moon, who had recently won the prestigious Hopwood Poetry Prize at the University of Michigan. With the retirement of Proctor Sherwin, Sam Moon took over the creative writing offerings and enhanced considerably the production values of the literary magazine. At the time, creative writing at Knox consisted of one or two courses a year that combined poetry, playwriting, and fiction, with occasional assistance in fiction from Professor Hal Gruetzmacher and visiting novelist William Eastlake. In 1967, I was a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where I had taught an array of literature courses, as well as undergraduate creative writing courses. I knew about Knox from several of my mentors (including R.V. Cassill, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth) and applied for a creative writing position that Knox had advertised. Though I was considering other teaching, writing, editing positions at the time, I accepted the Knox offer with enthusiasm, in part because of my positive interactions with Sam Moon, Doug Wilson, Howard Wilson (among many others, in various departments) and, in part, because I was encouraged to partner with Sam in expanding the creative writing offerings into a fully developed program and major.
Sam and I set to work on this ambitious project almost immediately upon my arrival on campus in the summer of 1967. We met often (almost nightly) and talked long into the wee hours, coming to realize that, despite our Mutt and Jeff differences in appearance, style, and demeanor, we shared a vision. By the fall of 1968, we had devised a comprehensive structure of beginning, intermediate (i.e.”workshop”), and advanced courses in fiction, poetry, and playwriting, as separate genre offerings (screenwriting, creative nonfiction, translation, and journalism were added later); we introduced new courses in contemporary fiction and poetry; we proposed increased offerings in 20th century individual authors (beginning with W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, etc. and expanding eventually to a list of more than 20 authors taught in (irregular) rotation: Samuel Beckett, Richard Yates, Carl Sandburg, Dylan Thomas, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, August Wilson, etc.); we developed linkages to courses in world literature in addition to English and American literature; we established close ties to other areas of the arts, including theatre, studio art, music (and eventually dance, photography, film, graphic design), each of which was focused on aspects of the creative process, per se, as opposed to studying the arts and Sam Moon literature as canonized subject matter; we drew up a plan for a new 12-course major in creative writing that included writing courses in at least two genres: an “allied” art course; literature courses in English, American, and world literature; and the new “capstone” or “keystone” course Senior Portfolio for Creative Writing Majors, which required students to edit and revise all of the writing (and other art) they had created at Knox and to write a substantial critical introduction to this book-length work. With this comprehensive proposal in hand (we were still awaiting faculty approval for the major), we joined the Associated Writing Programs (AWP), a new national organization for student/faculty writers, and were among the first three undergraduate programs to be recognized (today there are some 300 undergrad programs in an organization devoted primarily to graduate writing programs). Eventually, the major in creative writing was approved, and Sam was appointed director (until his retirement in 1985, when I was appointed to the position). Given that all Creative Writing majors at Knox graduate with their own book in hand, one is correct in assuming that nothing quite like this existed on the American undergraduate landscape at the time, nor have many viable competitors since emerged to challenge either the distinctiveness of our interdisciplinary design, our focus on the creative process, or our record of student achievements and alumni outcomes. This is an audacious claim, I realize, but it is substantiated by numerous benchmarks of success.
Growth of the Program in Creative Writing As indicated above, Knox has had a commitment to creative writing for much of its history, but following the formalization of a major in Creative Writing the number of student creative writers (from nearly all states and many nations) has soared— first equaling the number of literature majors, then surpassing that number by a third, then doubling it. In recent decades, Creative Writing has been consistently 2
among the top three majors campus-wide; currently, Creative Writing is the largest major at Knox, attracting nearly 12 percent of the upperclass student body (distributed among 39 majors). To the best of my knowledge, Knox is the only college or university in the U.S. or abroad where Creative Writing is the largest undergraduate major. Correspondingly, the size of the Creative Writing faculty has grown from two writers in 1967 (Moon and Metz) to nine (widely published and awarded) writers today—such are the enrollment demands for creative writing courses (and related courses in the interdisciplinary arts); such is the sustained growth curve (and continuing trend) over the past half-century for Creative Writing at Knox. Small wonder that Poets & Writers magazine (New York) featured Knox (with Oberlin and Sarah Lawrence) as one of the top three undergraduate writing programs in the nation.
Catch Ascendant Amidst the political and social tumult of the late 1960s-early 1970s, Knox students, many of whom were active in various national protests, decided it was time to move boldly in a new direction, re-conceptualizing, re-invigorating, and re-naming the campus literary magazine, previously known as The Siwasher. There are several stories as to how the magazine editors decided on the name Catch, but the version I’m inclined toward suggests an association with the famous novel Catch 22 and its darkly humorous, anti-war sentiments. Not surprisingly, this spirit of upheaval and change impacted virtually every aspect of the magazine itself: whereas The Siwasher, under Sam’s guidance, was a slender (usually under 50 pages), Huzzah for Catch quietly elegant publication, the new Catch was Catch has won numerous a brawny, brawling, often flashily or profanely national and international experimental undertaking, and as thick as awards in its history: your thumb(s) (100, 150, 200 pages), yet no National Program less committed to the bedrock values of quality Directors’ Prize from the expression. Indeed, to read side-by-side a late Association of Writers issue of The Siwasher and an early issue of and Writing Programs Catch is rather like encountering Emily 2014 1986* Dickinson and Walt Whitman on the same 2003 1983* Brooklyn ferry! Personal preferences aside, Associated College Press however, Catch continued to grow and to Magazine Pacemaker flourish, soon publishing two issues a year, Awards and Finalist then three issues a year—600 compelling pages Recognition annually from a campus population (at that 2016 2007 2005 time) of fewer than 1,200 students. How 2010 2006 2004 remarkable. But the best was yet to come. In *Known as the CCLM 1983, Catch entered for the first time the National Collegiate national collegiate competition for literary Competition’s First Place magazines (adjudicated in that era by the Award at this time. Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines 3
(CCLM), New York, NY). You’ve long since heard the good news, I’m sure: we won! Call it Best in the Nation, call it National Collegiate Championship, whatever: there were more than 300 entries from universities and colleges of every size and shape. Soon after, Sam and I were deluged by requests for interviews in print and broadcast media—the persistent news angle being a David/Goliath story line. The most fun, though, came about when Knox President John McCall was persuaded to take out a half-page ad in The Chicago Tribune that highlighted our victory and graciously congratulated the runners-up—Northwestern, Michigan State, Amherst, Oberlin—for their valiant efforts. Whereupon Northwestern’s president phoned John McCall to complain; believe me, it wasn’t often that one heard John McCall erupt in chuckles of delight. Of course, the story doesn’t end there—far from it. Over the next 33 years, Catch has won top national honors an additional 9 times (i.e. every three years, on average) in competition with all challengers—Harvard, Stanford, North Carolina, you name it (from Division I to Division III colleges/universities, inclusively). Indeed, apart from women’s archery in the 1950s, the numerous Catch awards represent Knox’s only national championships in any artistic, academic, or athletic endeavor. That’s quite a record of Knox student achievement even when viewed through the lens of aw-shucks Midwest modesty.
The Nick Adams Short Story Contest In 1973, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), the consortium of 14 colleges to which Knox belongs, announced that an anonymous donor had established an annual prize for the best short story written by an ACM student: The Nick Adams Short Story Contest (named after a character in Ernest School Winner Finalist Knox College 12 54 Hemingway’s fiction). Annually, a limited St. Olaf College 6 28 number of stories—usually 4-6 (or 10 Macalester College 5 25 percent of entries)—are named Finalists Beloit College 3 25 (as judged by a rotating panel of ACM Colorado College 3 23 professors); the First Prize story (judged by Lawrence University 3 15 a writer of national distinction—including, Grinnell College 4 18 over the years, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Carleton College 3 15 Anne Tyler, Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Lake Forest College 1 8 Hardwick, Maya Angelou, Stuart Dybek, University of Chicago 1 8 etc.) receives a prize of $1,000. Over this Coe College 1 8 43-year period, the scorecard reveals Cornell College 1 5 Monmouth College 1 3 that Knox student writers have won Luther College 0 2 double the First Prizes and nearly double Ripon College 0 0 the Finalist Awards as their nearest competitors (including Carleton, Grinnell, Macalester, Colorado College, St. Olaf, Beloit, Lawrence, the University of Chicago, etc.)—i.e. a First Prize Knox entry, on average, every four years (and many, many more Finalists). I wish there were a polite or modest way to say this, but Knox writers have seriously kicked butt. Huzzah! Just think: four decades of conference domination; if Knox writers were a football or basketball team, there would be banners fluttering from every rafter on campus. 4
A Prairie Flowering of Other Student Publications Whether because of or in spite of the national reputation of Catch, numerous additional student publications have sprouted at Knox over the decades. For a brief time, there was a competing journal irreverently titled Snatch. Then an excellent online journal of literary criticism emerged—The Common Room—that has thrived for the past 20 years. Then we saw the emergence of Cellar Door (so named because Vladimir Nabokov once remarked that “cellar door” was the most beautiful phrase in the English language, or because Carl Sandburg, ever earthy, once defined poetry as a combination of “hyacinths and biscuits,” or maybe because Illinois is smack in the middle of Tornado Alley…). In any event, Cellar Door is alive and well—a beautiful publication by any measure. More recently, an entirely different kind of student “genre” magazine began publication on campus. Quiver (in the sense of a carrying-case for arrows) is the home for three different special-genre concepts: fantasy, humor, children’s/YA literature, each named for the book of a distinguished Knox alum: The Third Level (Jack Finney); Diminished Capacity (Sherwood Kiraly); Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (Eugene Field). Further, there is another new publication, Folio, that combines student graphic design with student writing in the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration that has been one of the unique features of the Program in Creative Writing since its formal inception in 1967-68, not to mention that Knox creative writers still appear routinely in The Knox Student, itself an award-winning publication. If you’re counting, that adds up to eight distinctive opportunities for undergraduate writers to see their work in print—on a campus of 1,400 students! But that’s only part of the story.
All the World’s a Stage Whether we trace the origins of poetry to ancient Sumer or to the bards of the Balkans, it is generally recognized that literature began as a formulated oral communication within a community. Thus, at Knox, creative writing is understood (by most) to be a literary and performative art, and the Program in Creative Writing has a long-standing commitment to both stage and page for the presentation of student and professional literary art. The importance of bringing distinguished professional writers to campus to share their work with students cannot be stressed highly enough, and the list of visiting writers over the years is both star-studded and diverse in its representation—W.H. Auden, Philip Roth, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, Richard Yates, Larry Woiwode, Tillie Olsen, Gerald Stern, Robert Coover, Susan Sontag, Edward Albee, Stanley Elkin, Tobias Wolff, Ethridge Knight, Grace Paley, Mark Strand, Jorie Graham, Carlos Fuentes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, William Gay, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Marilynne Robinson, James Dickey, Toni Cade Bambera, Robert Pinsky, Donald Justice, Sharon Olds, David Bradley, Maxine Kumin, Barry Lopez, Junot Diaz, Helena María Viramontes, Billy Collins, Denis Johnson, Andre Dubus Jr, and Andre Dubus III, Aimee Bender, Stuart Dybek, Alice Fulton, Michael 5
Left: Scene from a Knox theatre production of Death and the King’s Horsemen, by Nigerian playwright, poet, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, performed on the occasion of his visit in 1999. Below: Natasha Trethewey,19th Poet Laureate of the U.S., in Alumni Hall in 2015.
Martone, Ada Limón, Adam Clay, Marianne Boruch, Brian Turner, Carl Phillips, Christine Schutt, Ben Percy, TJ Jarrett, Peter Orner, Dao Strom, and Kwame Dawes—to name nearly three-score of the hundreds of writers (honestly, often 10 or more a year) who have impacted the Knox campus for the past half century. As you might well imagine, I’m often asked by other (envious) program directors how Knox manages such an exceptional Visiting Writers Series. My answer is straight-forward: The John (Class of 1937) and Elaine Fellowes Fund—the most extraordinary endowed gift in support of the literary arts the College has ever received. In 1989, the Fellowes established the fund in order to honor literature and creative writing at Knox. From 1993 until 2013, this gift sustained faculty projects, the Visiting Writers Series, the Caxton Club reading series, and honored John and Elaine Fellowes’ legacy and life-long commitment to the College. An endowed chair was established in their name in 2013.
A Chorus of Student Voices In the 1970s, two students, Craig Murray and Les Emery, suggested that the Program in Creative Writing needed a Student Writers Series to complement the professional readings (and faculty readings) we programed on campus. Sam and I readily agreed, and The Weekly Reader—a forum for student writers to present their work—was initiated. It was a somewhat formal, rather elegant affair, held once every week at 6:00 p.m. in Seymour Union; wine was served in actual wine glasses; the student readers (limited to senior writing majors) rehearsed their presentations for weeks in advance; the audience (always 100 or more) rewarded the presenters with rapt attention. This format was sustained for years, though eventually there were disquieted murmurings from those students not eligible 6
to participate, and the concept was expanded to an open-mic format that included musicians, actor monologues, improv bits, etc. and renamed Forum. The quality proved uneven, however, and attendance declined. The next iteration was called Writers’ Forum and focused once again on student writing, though a new group, meeting at various off-campus venues, and including an array of performing artists, was formed and called, at first, Get Your Knox Off, then (following protests about the suggestive title) Off Knox. For a time both groups—Writers’ Forum and Off Knox—flourished in harmony. But again, attendance eventually dwindled. Along the way, however, new concepts were being generated by students and faculty working in tandem—Art to Art (an interdisciplinary collaboration, as the title suggests) and New Plays Festival to name just two examples. Currently, all senior Creative Writing majors present their work at a series of scheduled events called Milk Route (in reference to an early Galesburg job held by Carl Sandburg). The quality of the work is stellar; the presenters are well prepared; the venue is jam-packed with students, faculty, and parents alike; the process is breathtakingly dynamic. Who could ask for anything more? Me myself and I, that’s who…on behalf of future Knox student writers and on behalf of my younger colleagues who will guide them.
Upon a Peak in Darien Having nearly completed my first half-century at Knox—a journey from whippersnapper to codger—I feel I’ve gained a bit of perspective. On the one hand, Knox writers (students, faculty, and alumni/ae alike) have achieved stupendous national recognition over the past decades—indeed, it would take a brochure two or three times this length to celebrate properly their accomplishments, not only in writing and other artistic careers, but also in editing, publishing, agenting, advertising, public relations, print and broadcast journalism, teaching, marketing, business, finance, medicine, and law. The list goes on. On the other hand, there is so much yet to undertake. Here’s a glimpse of that shimmering sea. I believe we need to launch new academic programs in arts administration, film production, and creativity studies, among other active engagements and interdisciplinary pathways in the Arts; we need to maximize the potential of our newly acquired letterpress (to be named, perhaps, The Prairie Moon Press—can you imagine Sam Moon’s quiet delight?); we need to revive the Dorothea Tanning Festival and reinvigorate our commitment to the Carl Sandburg Festival; we need to finalize our plans for the Midwest Writers, Artists, Performers Hall of Fame and Research Center; we need to embrace the promise of new, intentionally-designed venues for writers and other performing artists as we implement, in stages, planned renovations in the Ford Center for the Fine Arts. And so much more—dizzying, yes? But as Sandburg has assured us, there’s always boundless energy and imagination galore in the generations to come—The People, Yes. “Where to? What next?”
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Robin Metz Robin Metz is the Philip Sidney Post Professor of English and director of the Program in Creative Writing. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He joined the Knox faculty in 1967, and has been awarded both the untenured and tenured Philip Green Wright prizes for distinguished teaching and the Caterpillar Corporation Award for outstanding creative/scholarly achievement. Since 1985, he has served as director of the Program in Creative Writing. At Knox, he has taught all levels of creative writing in fiction, poetry, and playwriting, as well as Senior Portfolio for Writing Majors, Modern English/Irish Literature, and Contemporary American Fiction. He has initiated several interdisciplinary courses, including London Arts Alive, Creativity (FP), This American Life (FP), The Natural Imagination, Writing Near and Far, The Literature and Film of Death and Dying, Environmental Literature, Chicagoland Poets, and numerous single-author courses, including: Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Richard Yates, John Cheever, August Wilson, Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandburg, Dorothea Tanning, Rita Dove, and Natasha Trethewey, among others. Many of these courses have included travel components to U.S. locales (Chicago, Kansas City, Wisconsin, northern Michigan, Key West) and international locales (London, Dublin, Paris, Havana, Wales). For seven years, he taught in and co-directed The Colorado College Summer Institute: Cities in Transition. For the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), he has directed the London component of the London/Florence Program, taught twice in the Chicago Arts Program, and has been Faculty Fellow for the Chicago Urban Studies Program. Robin received the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize for his book Unbidden Angel (Cross-Cultural Communications, New York), which was nominated for the London Guardian Poetry Book of the Year Award and listed as one of two poetry books for President Clinton’s Commission on Alternative and Complementary Medicine. He has also won the Literal Latté International Poetry Prize, a National Poetry Competition Award, the Dylan Thomas Poetry Prize, the Marshall Frankel American Fiction Prize, The Mississippi Valley International Poetry Prize, an X.J. Kennedy Prize, Roll of Honor citations in The Best American Stories, and 16 additional national/international awards, as well as awards and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, The Music Corporation of America, PEN International, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His play Anung’s First American Christmas (based on a story by Carl Nordgren ’73, as told to him by Chief Baminowekapo, Keewatin Ojibwa, Canada) received four “Top Ten”/”Best
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of Season” citations for its 2009 world premiere. Metz’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (more than 100 publications) has appeared in numerous national journals, including Paris Review, Epoch, International Poetry Review, Visions International, Other Voices, Rosebud, Writers Forum, among many others, as well as international publications in England, Wales, France, Romania, Japan, Korea, Nepal, and a dozen anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. His forthcoming books include Chicagoland Poets (editor) and New and Selected Poems (both from Nirala Publications, Delhi/ Kathmandu) and the Romanian bi-lingual translation of his play, Anung…. He has presented some 340 readings/performances of his work (often in collaboration with visual artists, actors, dancers, and musicians) in 76 American cities and in 24 nations (most recently Kosovo, Cuba, India, Wales, Romania, England, Nepal). Notable venues include: Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York Public Library, Poets House (New York); Chicago Cultural Center, Harold Washington Library (Chicago); LACMA (Los Angeles); Oxo Tower, Toynbee Institute (London); Edinburgh Book Festival; Dylan Thomas Cultural Centre (Swansea); Shakespeare & Company, Rodin Museum (Paris); India Cultural Center (New Delhi); Cuban National Writers Conference (Havana); as well as numerous ACM and GLCA colleges and scores of additional cultural centers, galleries, libraries, bookstores, colleges and universities (Harvard, Princeton, Boston University, USC, Michigan State, Iowa, Iowa State, SUNY Binghamton, Connecticut, Wisconsin, etc.). Robin is co-founder (with Artistic Director Liz Carlin Metz) and executive producer of Chicago’s acclaimed Vitalist Theatre Company, which has won both Chicago After Dark and Joseph Jefferson (JEFF) Awards and whose notable productions include The Mill on the Floss, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, King Lear, Mother Courage, Anna Karenina, A Passage to India, The Night Season, Life is a Dream, The Ghost is Here, Pool (no water), and Multitudes, among many others. His 2D and 3D art installations have been exhibited in Chicago and in New York City, most recently in collaboration with New York artist Adel Gorgy. He appears in several documentary films, including the PBS American Masters feature on Carl Sandburg. He owns and manages the 440-acre Buck Creek Farm in the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin—a certified organic farm (Organic Valley) and designated Tree Farm (U.S. Forest Service)— which has received two conservation awards from the State of Wisconsin. Now in his fiftieth year of teaching, Robin is deeply grateful for the opportunities, inspiration, and support Knox College has provided him; for his generous and courageous colleagues and students—past and present, at home and abroad; and for his many dedicated mentors, artists and teachers all, who have held high the torch for a lifetime.
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SELECT ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENTS To cast a wide net over 50 years, our alumni accomplishments are numerous and impressive, too many here to name. Knox writers have received distinguished fellowships from top graduate writing programs, including the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Stanford University, New York University, Brown University, and Indiana University, among others. They have held Fulbrights and Stegners. Our alumni have been winners of the American Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Emmy, and the Rhysling Award in Science Fiction. They have been editors at Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, and various American university and independent presses.They have run libraries and opened bookstores. They have built their own businesses; built their own literary presses and journals; served non-profits; worked in radio, television, and print media; published books, articles, and stories in every genre and in a wide-range of disciplines; and contributed at every level and in every way to the arts. We are terribly proud of all of their successes. Below, we’ve highlighted just a few of the many. William H. Colby ’77, general counsel at Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City, Missouri, is the author of Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan, based upon his experience representing the family of Nancy Cruzan in a landmark “right to die” case before the United States Supreme Court in 1992. He has spoken extensively on medical/legal issues around the country and has taught law and bioethics at the University of Kansas Law School. Cecilia Pinto’s ’81 work has appeared in a variety of literary journals over a 20-year period, including Quarter After Eight, The Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, and The Mississippi Review. Her chapbook, A Small Woman, is available from Dancing Girl Press, and she has published two children’s books. She is on faculty in the writing conservatory at the Chicago High School for the Arts and teaches for the Writer’s Studio at the Graham School at the University of Chicago. Tony Etz ’83 is an agent with the Creative Artists Agency, the world’s leading full-service entertainment and sports agency, based out of Los Angeles, California. He teaches media classes as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California. Lara Moritz ’90 has reported for the Kansas City, Missouri, television station KMBC for the last two decades. She has received two Emmy Awards and two Edward R. Murrow awards during her career. Her major reporting assignments have included in-depth stories on immigration, and interviews with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
Joseph Lennon ’90 is the author of Fell Hunger (Salmon Poetry Press, 2011) and Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press, 2004). He is associate professor of English and director of Irish Studies at Villanova University. Ander Monson ’97 is founder and editor of DIAGRAM, one of the first online literary journals, and of New Michigan Press. He is the author of six books, including Letter to a Future Lover (2015), Vanishing Point (2010, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other Electricities (2005, finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize). He is director of the MFA program at the University of Arizona and an associate professor of English. Jen Tynes ’01 is founding editor of Horse Less Press and author of The End Of Rude Handles (2006), Heron/Girlfriend (2008) and Trick Rider (2014), Hunter Monies (2016), and of eight chapbooks. She lives and teaches in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Stephen Pihlaja ’02 is the author of Antagonism on YouTube: Metaphor in Online Discourse (2014) and Religious Talk Online: Muslim, Christian, and Atheist Discourse on Social Media (forthcoming). He has lived in Japan, Malaysia, and the UK, and is now an applied linguist, discourse analyst, and stylistician, researching and teaching at Newman University in Birmingham. He is also senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy and primary investigator on a Social Innovation Project. Beth Marzoni ’04 is the co-author with Monica Berlin of No Shape Bends the River So Long (2015), and is assistant professor of English and co-director of the Honors Program at Viterbo University. Alex Keefe ’06 now leads a new government and politics unit at WBEZ-FM in Chicago, was local host of Vermont Public Radio’s All Things Considered and previously worked at WVIK-FM in Rock Island, Illinois. Awarded the 81st National Headliner Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award (2015) for “Political Dark Arts,” he was also honored by the Society of Professional Journalists as one of the 2014 Sigma Delta Chi Award Winners and by the Illinois Associated Press in 2015. B.J. Hollars ’07 is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the author of eight books, including Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America (2011), Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa (2013), and Flock Together: A Love Affair with Extinct Birds (2017). JoAnna Novak ’07 is the author of four chapbooks and the novel I Must Have You (2017). A founding editor of the print journal and chapbook press, Tammy, Novak is an assistant professor at Mount Saint Mary’s University in California. Monica Prince ’12 wrote, directed, and produced the choreopoem Something to Keep Me Vertical, which originally premiered in February 2015, and came from a series of 50 interviews with young people all over the U.S. about love, sex, and relationships. Prince’s Confessions in Living Color(ed), originally produced at Knox in 2012, most recently premiered in Brooklyn, New York, in December 2015, under a new name, Testify, and was produced by the CutOut Theatre, a small theatre run by Avery Wigglesworth ’13. 11
ANNIVERSARY EVENTS On Campus Aleksandar Hemon Monday, January 30, 2017 Bookfellow Room, Seymour Library 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Will Boast ’02 Audrey Petty ’90 Thursday, February 16, 2017 Alumni Room, Old Main 100 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Rita Dove
Aleksandar Hemon
Monday, April 10, 2017 Muelder Reading Room, Seymour Library 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Rachel Hall ’86 Anna Leahy ’88 Courtney Meaker ’08 Friday, May 12, 2017 Alumni Room, Old Main 100 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Will Boast ’02
Elizabeth Barrios ’09 Friday, May 19, 2017 Alumni Room, Old Main 100 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Laura Adamczyk ’03 Vida Cross ’88 Adam Soto ’10 Friday, September 29, 2017 Alumni Room, Old Main 100 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Audrey Petty ’90
Marilynne Robinson Monday, October 23, 2017 Muelder Reading Room, Seymour Library 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
knox.edu/CW50
Rachel Hall ’86
Alec Soth/Magnum Photos
Fred Viebahn, 2016
Rita Dove
Marilynne Robinson
Anna Leahy ’88
Courtney Meaker ’08
Elizabeth Barrios ’09
Laura Adamczyk ’03
Vida Cross ’88
Adam Soto ’10
THE CURRICULUM Workshops Since the late 1960s, the engine of the Program’s success continues to be a studio model. With emphasis on making art, students are immersed in a creative community upon entering a beginning writing course. Each year, we offer multiple courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, translation, playwriting, and screenwriting. At the beginning-level, students study the inner workings and outer forms of a given genre, practice the appraisal of these conventions in others’ work, and experiment with them in their own writing. Having entered into dialogue with the Tradition, and with each other, students are encouraged to embrace their own artistic paths in the upper-level workshops. For this reason, the primary reading in a upper-level workshop is more exclusively composed of student work. These workshops offer a concentrated experience that both fosters collaboration and presents a clearer map for the individual writer.
Electives Our curriculum also relies upon a variety of electives to refresh students’ understanding of craft, dynamizing each writer’s ability to connect with others—across boundaries of time, space, and identity. Such study reveals art as a powerful, empathic tool. We believe the exploration of literature in another language, diasporic literature, and literatures of marginalized peoples are indispensable. A course focused on other ways of channeling the imagination and practicing one’s craft—in acting, painting, dancing—is indispensable.
Above: Student poets rehearse with the Ben Allison Quartet, Jerome Mirza Jazz Residency, November 2013. Right: Victoria Baldwin ’16 and guest Ben Allison perform one of Baldwin’s poems.
Portfolio The cross-pollinations that are fostered throughout each student’s major converge in the capstone course Senior Portfolio. Typically during the spring term of their senior year, students produce a manuscript, which aims to represent the fullest maturity and clearest articulation of each student’s art, up to that point, and establishes a solid foundation for a writing life—in any field.
Above: Faculty Nicholas Regiacorte and Monica Berlin lead students in Senior Portfolio classes on a “pilgrimage” from the Carl Sandburg statue on the Public Square, to Old Main, and then to the Sandburg Birthplace historic site.
Above: Robin Metz and a student blow on a horn that Metz brought back from Nepal. Right: At the Sandburg site, students walk past the bust of Sandburg by sculptor Lonnie Stewart. 15
After ten weeks of studying all of Samuel Beckett's plays, fiction, and poetry on campus, Robin Metz’s Beckett class followed his career path from Dublin (above) to London and Paris. The statue is of Dublin’s iconic Molly Malone (“…crying cockels and mussels, alive, alive-O”).
Immersions Because we believe art cannot live in a vacuum, the core of our curriculum encourages exploration and experience beyond our campus community. Immersive experiences include the ACM Chicago Program, which offers Urban Studies, Chicago Arts, and Business, Entrepreneurship and Society; London Arts Alive, which examines the arts in the social and political context of a global urban center; and Ernest Hemingway, which includes a short trip to Cuba.
Honors Projects The Honors Program at Knox supports students in pursuing a year-long project of their own design. At the end of the year, a student submits a thesis or creative project and participates in a final oral exam, given by the student’s advisory committee and assisted by a scholar or writer from another college or university. Honors projects from the recent past include: Sofia Drummond-Moore’s ’16 and Caleb Shao-Ning Fridell’s ’16 collaborative film Afterimage, Erin Daugherty’s ’13 multimedia nonfiction Mining Town to River City, Rana Tahir’s ’13 Bukhoor, poems and paintings about the 1990 occupation of Kuwait, and Michael Martinez’s ’12 memoir In Passing: A Collection of Generally Gendered Anecdotes.
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Select Prizes Our students continue to be beneficiaries of the generosity of extended members of the Knox community. The annually-awarded prizes listed below reinforce the Program’s legacy and recognize our current students’ success. The A. Eugene and Ella Stewart Davenport Literary Awards—established in 1960 by John Davenport, Knox faculty 1945-72, in memory of his parents—acknowledge creative writing of fiction, playwriting, and poetry. Each spring, submissions are solicited by genre and ultimately judged by established writers from around the country. The Howard A. Wilson Prize (1986) is awarded to Knox students writing the best pieces of literary criticism during an academic year. Named in honor of Professor Howard Wilson, Knox faculty 1946-80, this prize was established by members of the faculty, former students, and friends. The Beverly K. White and Friends Creative Writing Prize (1987) is awarded annually to a beginning writer for the outstanding piece of creative writing during the year. Established by friends and classmates in memory of Beverly White, Class of 1979. The Proctor Fenn Sherwin Short Story Award (1995) is awarded to a senior student who submits the best original short story. Established by Mary-Louise Dilworth Rea, Class of 1936, in honor of Proctor Fenn Sherwin, Knox faculty 1924-1957. The Audrey Collet-Conard Prize, established in 2016 in memory of AudreyCollet-Conard ’65, will be awarded annually beginning in 2017 to a student whose poems reflect both aesthetic excellence and spiritual resonance (broadly defined). William E. Brady Award (2008) is awarded each year to honor the senior literature major with the best performance in the senior seminar. Established in memory of Professor William E. Brady, Knox faculty 1962-1994, by family, faculty, former students, and friends. The Scripps Prize (1974) , awarded to the graduating senior receiving the highest grades in English, this prize was established by Mrs. Wayne Haynes in memory of her father, William Scripps, Class of 1878. The Nina Marie Edwards Memorial Fund (1989) provides assistance to junior and senior students carrying out independent or honors projects in the fields of literature or creative writing. Established by colleagues to honor Ms. Edwards, a member of the Class of 1921. Lorraine Smith Prize in English (1929) is awarded to the sophomore writing the best essay in an English course. Prize given in books. Established by Nellie Johnson Smith, Class of 1898, in memory of her daughter, Class of 1930. Elizabeth Haywood English Research Award (1997) was created in memory of Elizabeth Haywood, class of 1988, by her parents, husband and sister. The fund provides a monetary grant to a worthy junior or senior female English major who desires to continue her study of the English language and literature for a term or summer in England. 17
THE FACULTY Emily Anderson Associate Professor of English and Director of Film Studies Emily Anderson earned her B.A. from Willamette University, her M.A. from Mills College, and her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. Her previous work has centered on epistemological crises in gothic novels and on adaptation theory. Currently, she is working on cinematic narrative strategies and their relationship to literary narrative. Her articles have appeared in Entertext, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and The Journal of Narrative Theory. A recipient of the Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, Anderson teaches 18th- and 19th-century English literature, film and literary theory.
Monica Berlin On faculty since 1998, Monica Berlin is the associate director for the Program in Creative Writing, an associate professor, and chair of the Department of English. A recipient of the Philip Green WrightLombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, Berlin teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, and late 20th- and 21st-century American literature. Her first book, No Shape Bends the River So Long, a collaborative collection of poems with Beth Marzoni ’04, was published in 2015 (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press). Her solo work has appeared in many journals, most recently The Cincinnati Review, Cimarron Review, Crazyhorse, Water~Stone Review, and The Kenyon Review.
Cyn Fitch Cyn Fitch, associate professor of English, received her B.A. from Knox College and her M.F.A. from Spalding University. Her first book, Ten Tongues, was published in the fall of 2010 by MotesBooks. Cyn’s work has appeared in numerous journals, among them: Carve, Fourth River, Ars Medica, The Louisville Review, and Opium. Cyn writes both fiction and nonfiction where the lines blur and undulate, often swinging between the two poles within the same day, the same hour, the same work. A Midwesterner, a flat-lander, the product of blue-collar sensibilities with a fascination for the Gothic and the grotesque, Cyn attributes much of her literary influence to Flannery O’Connor, a writer of that certain quality of darkness that is finally shot through with light.
Gina Franco Gina Franco, associate professor of English, earned degrees from Smith College and Cornell University. She is the author of a book of poems, The Keepsake Storm, and has published widely in journals, including 32 Poems, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, DIAGRAM, Fence, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and West Branch Wired. Awarded residencies with Casa Libre en la Solana, the Santa Fe Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the PINTURA:PALABRA Residency in Washington, D.C., she has served as art editor, gratefully, for several years to Pilgrimage Magazine. Awarded the Philip Green Wright-Lombard Prize for Distinguished Teaching, Gina teaches poetry writing, 18th- and 19th-century British literature, Gothic literature, Modern and contemporary poetry, poetry translation, Latino writing, religion and literature, and literary theory. Gina is an oblate with the Catholic monastic order of the Community of St. John in Princeville, Illinois. She and her husband divide their time between Galesburg and the Southwestern U.S., where they grew up, and where their family lives.
Nicholas Regiacorte Nicholas Regiacorte, associate professor of English, received his M.F.A. in poetry writing from the University of Iowa. In the years following, he received a Paul Engle fellowship, spent a Fulbright year in Italy, and started teaching at Knox. A recipient of the Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, his teaching interests include Modern poetry, poetry writing, prosody, nonfiction writing, and William Carlos Williams. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, 14 Hills, Copper Nickel, New American Writing, Mary, Descant, and elsewhere. He is currently writing poems in the voice of an extinct pachyderm with a straw tail.
Natania Rosenfeld Natania Rosenfeld is a professor of English Literature and has been in the department since 1998. Her B.A. is from Bryn Mawr College, her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She is the author of a critical book, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf (Princeton University Press, 2000) and a collection of poetry, Wild Domestic (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015). Her poems, essays and stories have appeared in a number of journals, including The American Poetry Review, Raritan, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, The Fairy Tale Review, Cave Wall, and Southwest Review. Three of her essays have been listed as “Notable” in annual Best American Essays collections. She lives in Galesburg and Chicago with her husband, Neil, her cat, Goya, and her dog, Bella.
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Lori Schroeder Lori Schroeder, professor of English, has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Denver. A member of the English department since 1996, she received the Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching in 2001. She inaugurated the department’s online journal of criticism, The Common Room, and served as English department chair for a number of years. In 2010, she stepped into the position of associate dean of the College. Lori’s scholarly publications have appeared in such journals as Shakespeare Studies, Modern Philology, The Upstart Crow, English Language Notes, Theater Journal, and Renaissance Quarterly. Lori’s teaching interests include the literature from the very early and the early modern periods of English literature and the history and development of the fairy tale.
Chad Simpson Associate Professor of English Chad Simpson’s stories and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies, including McSweeney’s Quarterly, Esquire, The Sun, New Stories from the Midwest 2012, and You Must Be This Tall To Ride. He has received awards from The Atlantic Monthly, the Illinois Arts Council, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where he was a work-study scholar, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where he received a Tennessee Williams scholarship. His collection of stories, Tell Everyone I Said Hi, won the 2012 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was published by the University of Iowa Press. A recipient of the Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, Chad has taught recent writing and literature classes on race and ethnicity in graphic novels, composite novels/linked short story collections, flash fiction, and the novella-in-flash.
Rob Smith Rob Smith, John and Elaine Fellowes Distinguished Chair in English, received a B.A. from the University of Strathclyde, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. The Seductions of Emily Dickinson (University of Alabama Press, 1996) received the Elizabeth Agee Prize and a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award. In 2003, he co-edited with Ellen Weinauer American Culture, Canons and The Case of Elizabeth Stoddard. His essays have appeared in Contemporary Literature, Narrative, Arizona Quarterly, and ESQ. Smith has also published short fiction in Fugue, Night Train, Barrelhouse, Other Voices, StoryQuarterly, Barcelona Review, and Versal, among many others. He received the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award in 2004. His story collection, The Violence, was published by Queen’s Ferry Press in 2015. His teaching and research interests include 19th-century American literature, literary theory, and film. 20
Barbara Tannert-Smith Barbara Tannert-Smith, associate professor of English, was born in Weehawken, New Jersey and received a B.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts. Barbara’s fiction has recently appeared in Paradigm, Rose and Thorn, and ken*again, and her non-fiction in Errant Parent and How to Write About Writers. Barbara is currently studying the representation of trauma in Young Adult (YA) Literature, and her article, “‘Like Falling Up Into a Storybook’: Trauma and Intertextual Repetition in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak,” was published in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (2010). She has also contributed a number of entries to the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Her teaching interests include fiction writing, nonfiction writing, and Children’s and YA literature.
Writer-in-Residence Sherwood Kiraly For over a decade, Sherwood Kiraly was a newspaper syndicate editor for columnists such as the late Roger Ebert and the late Ann Landers, and briefly became a TV writer (co-writing an episode of the CBS sitcom E/R starring Elliott Gould). He “found his sound” with the critically acclaimed comic novel California Rush and followed it with Diminished Capacity and Big Babies. He adapted his fourth novel, Who’s Hot/Who’s Not, into a play, which became a commercial and critical hit for the Laguna Playhouse in California. While writing the “What’s So Funny” column for the Laguna Coastline Pilot (Tribune Co.) from 2002-2009, he adapted Diminished Capacity and Big Babies into screenplays. He was on location when Diminished Capacity was shot in New York and New Jersey in 2007 as a co-production of Steppenwolf Films and Plum Pictures, starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Virginia Madsen, Louis CK, Lois Smith and Bobby Cannavale. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, kicked off the Gen-Art Festival in New York that year, and was nominated for best picture at Chicago’s Midwest Independent Film Festival. Bought by IFC, it was featured most recently on that channel. He won the Artist of the Year award in Laguna Beach in 2009, and returned to Knox as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in 2011.
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VISITING FACULTY (2016–2017) Katya Reno Katya Reno, a visiting assistant professor, teaches beginning literature and creative writing classes and an editing course. Previously, she was an associate editor at Oxford University Press. She has worked in the book publishing field both in-house and as a freelancer for 16 years. Her book-length poem, Slip, will be published by Paperdoll Works in spring 2017. Recent stories have appeared in The New England Review and The Revolver Reader.
Valerie Billing Valerie Billing received her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. Her teaching interests include medieval and early modern literature, early women writers, gender and sexuality, and queer literature. Billing has previously published in Renaissance Drama and The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.
COLLABORATING FACULTY Laura Behling, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Professor of English Neil Blackadder, Professor and Chair of Theatre James Dyer, Assistant Professor of Journalism Fred Hord, Professor of Africana Studies John Haslem, Director, Center for Teaching and Learning Robert Hellenga, George Appleton Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English; Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Paul Marasa, Writing Coordinator, TRIO Achievement Program Elizabeth Carlin Metz, Smith V. Brand Endowed Chair of Theatre Magali Roy-Féquière, Associate Professor and Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies, Chair of Africana Studies Marilyn Webb, Distinguished Professor Emerita
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NEW DIRECTIONS AND ENGAGEMENTS The Program in Creative Writing looks forward to the future with openness and in anticipation of all that we can’t yet know or see. As we recognize our continued devotion to the legacy set forth by Sam Moon and Robin Metz, current faculty and students, along with future faculty and students, will shape our next 50 years, and beyond. Following, we highlight some of what’s on the horizon.
The Space Begun in 2011, and supported through the generosity of Professor Monica Berlin, The Space is a writing studio and literary center with a small lending library, and has become one of the working hubs of the Program. Nearly famous among the students for its remarkable windows and view of Downtown Galesburg, students and faculty gather together there for Milk Route and the Program’s annual Midnight Reading, as well as other occasional events. Housed in The Box, neighboring the gallery and adjacent to the new letterpress studio, and part of the continually developing arts corridor between Kellogg and Seminary Streets, The Space creates another opportunity for continued collaboration among writers and artists, among students and faculty, and reiterates the Program’s commitment to dedicated rooms for practice and for play.
The letterpress arrives. Kelly Clare ’16, Hal Keiner ’67, Andrea Ferrigno (art), and Nick Regiacorte get to work.
The Press Over the summer of 2016, Harry (Hal) Keiner ’67 loaded his pickup with a collection of vintage lead and wood type, type cabinets, specialized tools, and several presses, and made two trips to Galesburg. On his second trip, in August, Keiner, a retired archivist and historian who now runs a book-arts and letterpress studio in North Carolina, spent several days working with a group of Department of Art and Art History and Creative Writing faculty to set-up, calibrate, and test-run the donated equipment. Knox’s new letterpress studio is housed in The Box, a gallery and community arts facility run by studio art professor Mark Holmes, and will serve as a collaborative site for faculty and students in art and creative writing. Kelly Clare ’16, a Knox post-baccalaureate fellow in art and creative writing, is supervising the facility in 2016-17.
The City in the Classroom As part of a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded grant, together with faculty at peer institutions Beloit College and Lake Forest College, Knox faculty are helping to develop new means of collaborative teaching and learning. As part of a co-taught pilot course called Chicago Orality, students from all three institutions pursued projects that explore the oral traditions of Chicago. Majors Bridget McCarthy ’18 and Julia Mondschean ’18 documented their findings with interviews, shaping that material into podcasts. The culmination of each student project, as well as the practice of inter-college team teaching, will yield new opportunities for 21stcentury students in literature and writing.
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JOIN US! We are hitting the road to celebrate with our alumni and friends around the country
Chicago Washington, D.C. San Francisco Kansas City New York Indianapolis St. Louis Ashland Denver Galesburg For more information and upcoming events, visit: www.knoxalumni.org/CreativeWriting
To commemorate the 50th Anniversary, we’ve curated a collection of limited edition letterpress broadsides. Purchase individual ones from our visiting writer series, our faculty series, or treat yourself to all of them.
www.knoxalumni.org/Broadsheets
2 East South Street Galesburg, Illinois 61401-4999 www.knox.edu/creativewriting