Department of English Graduate Student News

By Jack Clifford

Hanh Hoang won the David T. K. Wong Fellowship, which is "... a unique and generous annual award of 26,000 to enable a fiction writer who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year in the UK, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich," according to the university's web site. Hoang submitted the story titled "Mr. Sa's Buddas" for the award. She says that while the events take place in Saigon in the 1960s, "the story is not about the Vietnam War, but about people with the universal yearning to be loved and understood." The story will be part of a novel Hoang will write during her stay at UEA from October 2009 to June 2010.

Frank Giampietro earned a bronze medal in March 2009 from the Florida Book Awards. Giampietro is a doctoral student who graduated in August with a Ph.D. in English. He earned his bronze medal in the poetry category for Begin Anywhere (Alice James Book, 2008).

Graduate students Dustin Anderson and Tatia Jacobson Jordan received impressive graduate awards for the 2008-09 academic year. Anderson was the winner of the FSU Graduate Student Leadership Award, and Jordan won FSU's Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Both of these awards are given in competitions that involve the entire University.

Kara Candito's first collection of poetry, Taste of Cherry, won the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was published this fall by the University of Nebraska Press. Tracy K. Smith praises the poems as "poised and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet. … Fearlessly and with clear-eyed candor, Candito sings a whole new set of constellations—made of 'the body's light … the din of a hundred conversations'—into bright being."

Kevin Carr has an article forthcoming in Renaissance Papers (2009) entitled "'What thing thou art, thus double formed': Naming, Knowledge and Materialism in Paradise Lost."

Eric Lee's most recent work appeared in the Summer issues of RATTLE and the Chiron Review and is forthcoming in Soundings Review, Crab Creek Review and New York Quarterly. His poem "Magellan on the High Seas" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected to be reprinted in the Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2009.

Sandra Simonds's first full-length collection of poetry, Warsaw Bikini, was published in 2009 by Bloof Books. Barbara Hamby says "Sandra Simonds's poems are hyperactive conduits into the chaos of our lost-at-sea moment in time. She's in love with words and all the damage they can do." Sandra followed Warsaw Bikini with a new chapbook just released by Grey Book Press. Of Used White Wife, Kevin Killian raves "Something got into Sandra Simonds's poetry like 'a wasp in a vehicle' that makes her 'jump over the yellow lines.' Her writing is full of amazing things, and if it makes the bystander on the sidewalk fear for his life as well as hers, those are the hazards of the souped-up turbo drive talent that propels her best poems."

Kristine Snodgrass's chapbook Fledgling Starlet was published by Grey Book Press this month. She was also recently honored as a Hambidge Fellow at the The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences.

Jay Snodgrass's chapbook Solid Waste has been published by Grey Book Press. This follows his full-length collections Monster Zero (Elixir 2002) and The Underflower (Wordtech 2008).

Sarah Unruh gave a paper titled "Corpses, Tombs, and Sepulchral Breakfasts: Emergent Cemetery Culture and Dark Ecology in Liber Amoris" last March at the conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Tana Jean Welch's poem "Sometimes, The Trip Across the Continent is Enough" was selected by Kim Addonizio for inclusion in Best New Poets 2009. Poet and critic David Wojahn has said of the series, "It's a nervy thing for an anthology to label itself Best New Poets, but ... this collection lives up to its name. It's a rich and readable selection, reflecting no party-line aesthetic, and attesting to the formidable promise of the emerging generation."

Matt Price presented his paper "A Plagued Community: Plague Redefinition and the Spatialization of Puritan Discourse" at the 6th biennial SEA conference in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Cheryl Price's paper "Poison, Sensation, and Secrets in The Lifted Veil" will be published in the Spring 2010 issue (35.1) of The Victorian Review.

Rebecca Lehmann received a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts for the month of July. She spent the month at the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, NY, working on poetry. She has two poems forthcoming in Denver Quarterly.

Brent Griffin has been selected as the Department of English's London Fellow for Spring 2010. In additional to teaching Shakespeare at FSU’s London Study Centre, he will continue his research on “original practice” stagings of early modern drama as an intern with the world renowned Globe Theatre. Brent currently serves the department as Managing Editor of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.