October 8th, 2009

In 1894 literary scholar George Saintsbury coined the term “Janeite” as a devotée of Jane Austen. Professor Maria Frawley (pictured with her cat Zeke) is a self-proclaimed Janeite, although she would like to emphasize that Janeites are scholars as well as devotées. You cannot deny this fact when meeting with the witty and warm Frawley who is not only a Nineteenth Century literature professor, but the new executive director of the University Honors Program.

Although Frawley has been teaching for years she had never been on the administrative side of things until now. “It has been very revealing and enlightening to learn what goes on behind the scenes,” she said. “There are a lot of balls in the air at once.”

This is not surprising since the University Honors Program is a university wide program serving all students in all schools. “The most important piece is adapting the curriculum to fit all students,” she said. This includes assessing the somewhat new curriculum. Frawley said, “I keep what’s working working and bring new ideas to the table.”

One of her prominent goals is working with the Admissions Office to market the program more. “We are a program that is freshmen only admission partly so we start building the community early on,” she said. Although most Honors students graduate with departmental honors, the English Department’s Honors Program is open to all who wish to apply whether they are in the University Honors Program or not.

Frawley finds this new community one of her favorites aspects of the job. “It’s very easy to find a niche in your home department and very rarely get outside of it,” she said. “The happiest part of my job is meeting new people.”

But this does not mean that Frawley is completely absent from her home department. She stills attends meetings, keeps up to date with English department friends, and continues to read and write. She said, “I have no intention of giving up that component of my identity.”

Frawley looks forward to teaching again next semester. She describes her Jane Austen Dean’s Seminar as a annual “multivitamin.” And eventually she hopes to have a teaching relationship with her Honors Program students.

Despite her busy new schedule and future plans to return to teaching, Frawley still finds time to advise students. “There are important relationships to nurture. I do not want to cut that cord,” she said.

Similarly Frawley continues to read and research. Although she admits, “It’s very easy to say I will read in the morning, but I use the time to respond to the email deluge instead,” she said. Despite the distraction, she is currently working on a lecture on Austen for Parents Weekend, writing a book review for a biography of Florence Nightengale, and even writing a new book on keywords distinctive to Austen’s writing.

Its safe to say Frawley is plenty busy, but still present as ever in all areas of GW. Just stop by her office in the Honors Program building and you will find a shrine to Jane Austen for Frawley is a true Janeite and GW professor if there ever was one.

To read more about the University Honors Program, you can visit their blog here.

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Welcome Back James Miller

October 1st, 2009

There are certain things that seem to only occur in literature: personification, metaphor, allusion. However reoccurring themes can appear in real life too as Professor James Miller knows well. This is particularly true in relation to his latest book Moments of Scottsboro: The Scottsboro Case and American Culture.

The project started in the late 1990s when Miller was working with colleagues who have now all gone in separate directions and was picked up again from 2002-6, with the book finally being published this year. “Scottsboro has been a long process. I was doing another project that was concerned with the representation of African Americans in 1930s culture. In the process of doing that work, I kept coming back to Scottsboro,” he said.

What is Scottsboro to Miller, who is not only an English professor, but the Chair of the American Studies department? “Scottsboro was the 1930s. It was the defining issue of the period,” he said. “It was reenacted over and over again in film, culture, poetry, music, visual arts, and drama.” Miller’s book covers everything from the case itself to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

DC has some amazing resources for professors and students alike. Miller found he was able to do most of his research at the Library of Congress. He said, “It turns out that some of the key documents I used are Soviet Union documents. After the Soviet Union collapsed the Library of Congress secured the documents of the American Communist Party.” Miller also researched records of the NAACP and the International Labor Defense, all readily available at the Library of Congress. “The Library of Congress is absolutely indispensable,” he said.

Ironically though, Miller’s next project could not be researched within his own surroundings. In order to study jazz, he found himself a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Whitwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa last semester. He said, “My research was on jazz history, the history of connection and relationships between African Americans and South African jazz musicians in the 1950s-70s.” He was specifically looking at the jazz opera “King Kong,” the first musical production in South Africa with an all black South African cast. “It was the place out of which many jazz musicians we came to know started from,” he said.

Jazz has also been a reoccurring theme throughout Miller’s life. “I’ve been interested in jazz since I was an undergraduate,” he said. “Its been important for my work. I always study with jazz in the background.” He even used to work at a jazz organization in Connecticut where he met many prominent jazz musicians.

Though these two projects may seem unconnected to the untrained eye, Miller sees it as one fluid work. “There’s a logic in my own mind that sees important continuities between the two projects,” he said. “They are the cultural politics of African American life in the US and the world in the 1930s and 1960s. Scottsboro is one important chunk and jazz is another important chunk.” Miller almost sees himself as working on a trilogy of sorts, even though he is still unsure of the third part of the trilogy.

With all of this research how does Miller find himself connected to teaching still? “Teaching is a way of riffing on these themes. Keeping my brain alive and testing these ideas out in the classroom,” he said.

We look forward to hearing his ideas and as Miller said,”I am happy to be back.”

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Margaret Soltan on the Lehrer News Hours … speaking about Dan Brown

September 25th, 2009

You might know that Dan Brown’s latest mystery is set here in DC. You might not know that Professor Margaret Soltan has read it, and talked about the book last night on the Lehrer News Hour. From the transcript (here):

MARGARET SOLTAN: [Mystery blockbusters] appeal to a large audience because they’re fun to read, they’re scary, they’re lurid, all those kind of lower emotions they appeal to. The other way of getting at it is that his books are — they satisfy that curiosity. I mean, serious literature tells you life is mysterious, but at the end of the novel, it’s still mysterious. It’s even worse, OK? Here, it’s mysterious, and things get solved in a very satisfying way.

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Introducing Ed Skoog: GW’s Latest Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence

September 24th, 2009

What influences poet Ed Skoog? Really, the question should be where is Ed Skoog influenced. Skoog, the newest Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence, may be in DC right now, but whose to say where he will be next fall. Even he does not know or want to know. “I don’t want to pick a place to settle down,” he said.

This somewhat nomadic existence is a good thing for Skoog and his poetry. Moving constantly is what stimulates him as a writer. He said, “It’s disorienting and exciting. The tensions that come from it are beautiful. So how can you choose? To choose one place is to deny so many others.”

Luckily, Skoog has never had to make that choice. Although his family has lived in Kansas for eight generations, he left as soon as he could, for college in Montana. Yet he did not even stay there for long and packed up a car to drive to New Orleans. For almost a decade he let the city inspire him, but coincidentally he took a job in California only ten days before Hurricane Katrina hit. There does not seem to be an semblance to any of these locales, yet Skoog sees it differently. “I’m drawn to places that were kind of margins of regular contemporary society,” he said.

Skoog has always felt somewhat on the margins of society just by his career choice. “Poetry is not a job exactly, but what I do,” he said. “All I wanted to do since age nine is write poetry. I’ve never been good at anything else.”

Skoog’s talent as a poet is what led him to the prestigious fellowship he holds and enjoys today. “It’s exciting to talk about poetry with people who are interested in hearing about it. It’s exciting and enlivening. Any conversation affects my work that day,” he said.

Although he only teaches two classes, one for undergraduates and one for all citizens of DC, Skoog has found himself incredibly productive since he arrived here. He walks around the city carrying a notebook and taking notes on what he sees and hears. “I go to museums, matinee movies, and observe street life. Its a mix of high and low art,” he said. Dialogue, everything from podcasts to overhearing conversation inspires him. In the evenings you can frequently find Skoog at the Black Cat taking in bands such as the Fruit Bats. A serious banjo player since age sixteen, he finds that music influences his work just as much as any other medium. And somehow, he still finds time to do a drawing or make a collage every morning.

There is no question about it, Skoog was meant to be in DC. The city has always held a special significance for him. He remembers visiting his grandparents in Bethesda and going to many arts events throughout DC as a child. He said, “Its important to me to develop a sense of the city, culture, aesthetics, art, and creative life here.” And there is no better time than now, “I want to go where the action is. Where there is good writers, art, living, and cooking,” he said.

Skoog has found his arts community through GW. “Wherever I go, the thing that changes is the audience, the people I meet,” he said. “My colleagues in the English department are fine poets, scholars, and readers. The department is very welcoming, friendly, and social. I automatically stepped into an interesting group.”

He is also a literal part of the community, living in the historic Lenthall House. “The house is a nice metaphor for the role of imaginative writing in the university. Its domestic, quiet, and private, a nice visual metaphor for the city,” he said. And Skoog is the perfect new inhabitant for the house, the city, and the fellowship.

Make sure to visit Skoog’s website. And look for his new book, Mister Skylight.

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The Return of Jonathan Gil Harris

September 16th, 2009

As students sunbathe in the last weeks of summer, professors feel the start of the new semester as an entirely different weather pattern. “The new semester has crashed with all the force of a tsunami. But sometimes it’s good to get wet,” said Professor Jonathan Gil Harris.

This academic year is a complete change from last year for Harris when he spent his days in “the bat cave,” that is the independent study rooms in the Folger Shakespeare Library. He eventually emerged one year and one book later to find himself in the throes of the new semester, where he is not only teaching but administrating as the new Director of Graduate Studies. During this transition period Harris notes, “I felt a little like Prospero on his island or maybe I was more like Caliban in the sense that I was doing work for others,” he said.

It is fitting for one of GW’s recognized Shakespeare scholars to make a reference to one of Shakespeare’s more biographical plays. Harris truly is, in a sense, both controversial characters of the play. He became Caliban after a commission from Oxford University Press to write his latest book Shakespeare and Literary Theory, so Harris found himself on a year long sabbatical at the Folger.

Although GW is a research institution, Harris had been doing plenty of research before his last commission. He said, “I was wary because I had just finished two other projects.” (Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare and his critical edition of the play The Shoemakers Holiday.)

Yet his latest book was a different style and challenge in itself. The book is meant to be read by undergraduates and graduates, not just scholars thus putting Harris into the Prospero role. “It was a tightrope act I had to preform,” he said. “On one hand making these difficult ideas from Shakespeare and literary theorists accessible. And on the other hand, not dumbing it down.”

The research was so extensive that Harris only spent four months writing the actual book. He found the book came naturally. “In a way I was having an extended conversation with an imaginary audience,” he said.

This internal dialogue did not replace the actual dialogue he had with students and professors. Therefore even after experiencing the gratification of finishing the book Harris was eager to return to GW where he resumed teaching, but also assumed the role as DGS. This is a role Harris is excited to have. He said, “We’ve got a really fabulous graduate program in terms of faculty and students.”

Though Harris is a professor currently, his years as a graduate student are still fresh in his mind. “It was the most exhilarating and demoralizing time of my life. The highs are very high and lows are very low.” Harris hopes though that his graduates feel mostly exhilarated. He said, “One of my missions is to nurture the growth of a community.” Harris remembers loving his discussions with fellow graduate students and still enjoys discussion with the graduate students he advises.

He hopes this will dissuade students from falling in a void of solitude like he did sometimes during his graduate work. “There are these romantic fantasies that graduate study is simply the life of the mind, but this is a dangerous idea,” Harris said. For the most part though, GW students are already savvy and sociable. “Our students are very good,” he said. “They do not disappear into the void.”

Will Harris himself disappear into a void from his undergraduate teaching? Absolutely not! Harris emphasizes his need for interacting with and teaching undergraduates. “I actually feel there is a very important link between undergraduates and scholarship,” he said. “I need research to keep me alive in the classroom, but I need the classroom to keep my ideas accessible and clear.”

Harris may have been gone for a year, but he has returned and is more present than ever. Welcome back Professor Harris!

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Introducing Gregory Pardlo: GW’s Newest Poet & Professor

September 11th, 2009

Stepping into Gregory Pardlo’s office is an odd, but charming combination of thrift store and art museum. Picasso adorns the wall as well as a salvaged window screen from Brooklyn. They are not just mere decorations, but help to explain some the fundamentals of GW’s newest creative writing professor.

For Pardlo is not just a creative writing professor, but a well recognized poet. A man who takes inspiration from everything around him: working at his grandfather’s jazz club, Steven Speilberg movies, Bob Dylan lyrics, and Walt Whitman poems just to name a few. The inspiration seems to be working. Pardlo has managed to finish a Bachelors, MFA, and a considerable amount of a PhD, win three prestigious poetry awards, and even get married, have two daughters and buy a house, all since 1995.

Pardlo is clearly driven, but surprisingly poetry did become his focus until age 25. “I’m coming from a working class background where poets are the marble busts in the library, not vocational,” he said. Poetry was always an interest for Pardlo though. A lifelong guitar player, he always loved music and eventually realized that what drew him to artists such as Bruce Springsteen or Prince was their lyrics. Pardlo said, “So it was a natural progression to begin writing poetry from lyrics.”

Even with this revelation Pardlo played around with several majors in college, eventually dropping out to travel. He called Denmark home for a year of his life, later leading to an interest in translating Danish poetry awarding him the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant in 2006. Finally after a stint working for his grandfather’s jazz club, Pardlo reemerged in academia where only one semester of poetry at Rutgers turned into a life changing experience. “I was able to identify living poets,” he said. “Not people shouting on street corners or selling books on a table on the sidewalk. So it gave me permission to write poetry.”

Once Pardlo decided to pursue poetry he was courted by many MFA programs, finally settling on NYU. The mainstay of the MFA program, the workshop, is still one of his favorite parts of academia. “I look for opportunities to get in the workshop setting,” he said. Propelling Pardlo to lead workshops for both the PEN America Center and the Calabash Writer’s workshop in Kingston, Jamaica.

An MFA can only get one so far, hence Pardlo attended CUNY for his PhD. Although a PhD is required for tenure at CUNY, Pardlo found another way to get around that. “I was the first person of color to ever win the American Poetry Review’s Honickman Prize [in 2007 for his book Totem],” he said.

If Pardlo was eligible for tenure how did he find his way to GW? “I did not want to teach freshman composition. I felt I would be most valuable teaching in poetry,” he said. “So I look for an institution that agreed with me.” And as you can guess, GW was that institution.

Pardlo’s expectations have been exceeded by GW. He is enthused about being in DC during the Obama Administration. He quotes Shelley, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Mostly though he appreciates his ability to work on his own poetry as well as teach. “GW is a research institution. They value professors who actually are working in their field,” he said.

What type of poetry does Pardlo write though? Even he cannot easily define it. “I try and stay out of whatever comfort zone I am able to identify.” He does admit to some consistency however, “I love lush imagery and language we are maybe familiar with but somehow seems moving and striking,” he said. He particularly likes looking for surprising combinations, likening it to cooking. “It’s like how to make a hot dog haute cuisine,” he said.

However when he is not writing he has been impressed by the quality of the students he teaches. He said, “At CUNY students expect creative writing to be an easy course. Here students are eager. I find myself looking for more innovative challenging ways to teach.”

Although Pardlo has only been at GW for a few weeks he is already inspired. He said, “I expect to learn as much from students as I hope to teach them.”

Read one of Pardlo’s poems on the American Poetry Review website. Also look for his editorship in the Calloo Literary Journal. And of course, make sure to take one of his creative writing courses!

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Edward P. Jones Residency in the GW Magazine

June 11th, 2009

From the latest edition:

Renowned Writers Share Their Craft

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones began his GW professorship in January with a public reading of his novel The Known World.

Last fall, English professors compiled a wish list of sorts: If they could have any modern literary great join the faculty, who would it be?

After careful consideration, the professors hashed out their top two choices—Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington, D.C., resident Edward P. Jones, and José Muñoz, a professor of performance studies at New York University with expertise in Latino studies and literature.

The GW English professors got their wish, and now both writers will take a semester-long turn as a visiting professor.

The new position, the Wang Visiting Professor in Contemporary English Literature, was made possible by a gift from Albert Wang and his family. The gift, of which the professorship is a part, is one of the largest philanthropic commitments to the English department. It also includes support for the Wang Endowed Fund in English Literature and Literary Studies, an annual series of lectures by prominent authors and scholars.

The selection process to fill the two professorships wasn’t made public, says Professor Jeffrey Cohen, chair of the Department of English. Instead of a call for applications, the department members crafted an A-list of possible visitors. “We wanted to choose the very best people to fill the two positions,” Dr. Cohen says, “and we wanted a creative writer and a literary scholar.”

“The possibilities were endless,” he continues, but once they narrowed their focus to an emphasis on diversity within contemporary English literature, Jones and Muñoz were the clear top choices. Luckily, Dr. Cohen adds, the authors both said “yes.”

Jones, who won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Known World, began his spring semester residence in January with a full schedule. He led a literary reading group for undergraduates, gave public readings, and taught an advanced creative writing course, offering students one-on-one suggestions on short stories or novel chapters before they presented to the larger writing workshop group. Jones says he doesn’t make assignments. “If you want to be a writer, you go out and write,” he says.

The soft-spoken author says he is honored to be sharing his craft. “I’ve never been given this title [professor] before; It’s a distinguished position,” Jones says.

Cohen hopes the addition of Jones to the English faculty will emphasize the strengths in African-American literature. He believes Dr. Muñoz, who will be in the position this fall, will do the same for building strengths in Latino studies. Jones’ residence on campus has already “brought an excitement about writing and about literature,” Dr. Cohen says. “For his inaugural reading there was standing room only.

“Not only is Jones a world-renowned writer, but he also is a part of our own city of Washington, D.C. He is the most celebrated novelist we have had in residence at GW,” Dr. Cohen continues. “Studying with him will provide our students an invaluable experience—one that we hope they’ll remember long after they graduate from GW.”

—CM

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Jane Shore in GW Magazine

June 11th, 2009

From the latest edition:

Life, in verse

By Jaime Ciavarra

Poet Jane Shore is moved by ordinary moments.

The GW professor of English captures life’s everyday details with lyrical language and colorful verse. When she drives her daughter to the hair salon or reminisces about a piece of furniture in her mother’s home, Shore finds a poem.

“Being a writer means that you’re living your life, but you’re also watching yourself living your life,” she says. When an event stirs her, “it’s like going to a museum and falling in love with a painting. You don’t know why you love it, but you can feel something percolating inside you.”

For more than three decades, Shore has transformed those palpitations into print. A prize-winning author and a professor at GW since 1989, Shore creates poetry that is accessible, carefully constructed, and almost always deeply personal. In 2008, she published her newest collection, A Yes-or-No Answer (Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt), in which she explores both the past and present—from childhood memories, to complicated family relationships, to grappling with middle age.

Poet and GW English professor Jane Shore says that readers shouldn’t be intimidated by poetry or bogged down by literary interpretation. “Go to the poetry section and just start reading. Don’t worry about understanding what you’re reading or what it means,” she says. “Find what’s appealing to you.”

“What makes me think that you’re interested in my life? I think that’s a fair question,” says Shore, who includes assorted pieces of autobiography in her fifth book of poetry, the same threads that are woven throughout the fabric of her other acclaimed collections. Shore writes about personal events, she says, because she believes readers connect with the commonality of the human experience: Watching as her daughter reads her old diary, remembering the mischief she had with a Jerry Mahoney dummy, struggling with the loss of parents and affirming, as she writes in the poem “Body and Soul,” to

Think of it as a bon voyage party —
A soul at last at liberty
To make its own plans.

“Writing poetry helps me understand the world,” she explains. “It allows me to discover things I didn’t know that I knew.”

Shore, who graduated from Goddard College in Vermont and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, says she was always drawn to the arts. She passed up opportunities to focus on music or dance when a college professor shared with her “the gift of poetry.” Today she imparts that enthusiasm for the written word in creative writing and modern and contemporary poetry classes. Shore calls GW her safe haven, a place where she continues to learn and discover the craft from deep discussions with her students.

“I think students come out of my classes with much better poems, and I hope they also gain a better sense of who they are as people and what they’re capable of doing in areas other than poetry,” she says. “Writing a poem is very hard. You’re asked to be honest and to share something of yourself, and you have nothing to hide behind.”

Shore’s ability to open up her life has won her prestigious accolades. Her first book of poems, Eye Level, won the 1977 Juniper Prize, and her second, The Minute Hand, was awarded the 1986 Lamont Poetry Prize. A decade later, she was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award for Music Minus One.

Although she believes in the organic relationship that occurs between the mind and the writing hand, Shore today uses technology to tell her tales. Stored in her computer files are more than 300 poems that she works on periodically. Sometimes it takes her a few hours to compose a poem that she’ll revisit and revise for five to 10 years. Time allows her to test words and phrases for precise meaning and durability.

To appreciate the language, don’t just skim over a poem once, Shore suggests. Read it again and again.

“I try to make a poem look smooth, but I hope when you’re done reading it, you’ll see that it’s like a pond. It has a smooth surface,” she says, “but also an undertow pulling you down to a deeper and darker place.”

Two Poems by Jane Shore

The Streak

Because she wanted it so much, because
she’d campaigned all spring and half the summer,
because she was twelve and was old enough,
because she would be responsible and pay for it herself,
because it was her mantra, breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
because she would do it even if we said no —

her father and I argued until we finally said
ok, just a little one in the front
and don’t ask for anymore, and, also,
no double pierces in the future, is that a deal?

She couldn’t wait, we drove straight to town,
not to our regular beauty parlor, but the freaky one —
half halfway house, half community center —
where they showed her the sample card of swatches,
each silk hank a flame-tipped paintbrush dipped in dye.

I said no to Deadly Nightshade. No to Purple Haze.
No to Atomic Turquoise. To Green Envy. To Electric Lava
that glows neon orange under black light.
No to Fuchsia Shock. To Black-and-Blue.
To Pomegranate Punk. I vetoed Virgin Snow.
And so she pulled a five out of her wallet, plus the tax,
and chose a bottle of dye she carried carefully
all the car ride home, like a little glass vial
of blood drawn warm from her arm.

Oh she was hurrying me! Darting up the stairs,
double-locking the bathroom door,
opening it an hour later, sidling up to me, saying, “Well?”
For a second, I thought she’d somehow
gashed her scalp. But it was only her streak, Vampire Red.

Later, brushing my teeth, I saw her mess —
the splotches where dye splashed
and stained the porcelain, and in the waste bin,
Kleenex wadded up like bloodied sanitary napkins.
I saw my girl — Persephone carried off to Hell,
who left behind a mash of petals on the trampled soil.

A Yes-Or-No Answer

Have you read The Story of O?
Will Buffalo sink under all that snow?
Do you double-dip your Oreo?
Please answer the question yes or no.

The surgery — was it touch-and-go?
Does a corpse’s hair continue to grow?
Remember when we were simpatico?
Answer my question: yes or no.

Do you want another cup of joe?
If I touch you, is it apropos?
Are you certain that you’re hetero?
Is your answer yes or no?

Did you lie to me, like Pinocchio?
Was forbidden fruit the cause of woe?
Did you ever sleep with that so-and-so?
Just answer the question: yes or no.

Did you nail her under the mistletoe?
Will you spare me the details, blow by blow?
Did she sing sweeter than a vireo?
I need an answer. Yes or no?

Are we still a dog-and-pony show?
Shall we change partners and do-si-do?
Are you planning on the old heave-ho?
Check an answer: Yes No .

Was something blue in my trousseau?
Do you take this man, this woman? Oh,
but that was very long ago.
Did we say yes? Did we say no?

For better or for worse? Ergo,
shall we play it over, in slow mo?
Do you love me? Do you know?
Maybe yes. Maybe no.

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Jane Shore on NPR

May 12th, 2009

Professor Jane Shore discussed Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” on NPR’s show Marketplace. You can listen to the program and read a transcript here. The beautiful poem is below.

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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Tammy Greenwood-Stewart at Bethesda Barnes & Noble

April 14th, 2009

Come hear popular creative writing teacher, novelist, and all around excellent person Tammy Greenwood-Stewart read from her latest work as part of the Bethesda Literary Festival. Information here and here. The reading will take place this Sunday, April 19, at 3 PM.

The Bethesda Barnes & Noble is a short walk from the Bethesda Metro (red line).

Check out Tammy’s photo blog as well, Ephemera Files. If you’ve noticed the beautiful black and white picture of a ruined car we have hanging in the English Department main office … well, that is one of Tammy’s many striking works.

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