Department Stories

Spring 2011

Professor Elizabeth Powell (Writing and Literature) and David Cavanagh (Co-director, EDP) have translated Anglo-Saxon riddles that appear in a new anthology from W.W. Norton. Entitled The Word Exchange: Translations of Anglo- Saxon Poems (edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto and introduced by Seamus Heaney), the anthology has been praised in Publisher’s Weekly and elsewhere. Reviews are forthcoming in The New York Review of Books and The Wall Street Journal.

The Writing and Literature Department’s BFA program had a very successful time at the Associated Writing Programs gathering. Professors Liz Powell and Jacob White took the new edition of Green Mountains Review, and the entire print run sold out! David Lehman, series editor for Best American Poetry, put the latest GMR on his blog site and selected Olena Klaytiak Davis’s three sonnets: “Sonnet (division),” “Sonnet (motion),” and “Sonnet (silenced)” from the pages of GMR.

Clyde Stats (Academic Support Services) and part time instructor Rose Modry (Writing & Literature) led a group of nine JSC students on a trip to New Orleans April 5-9 as part of Clyde’s first-year seminar course, “Music and Culture

in New Orleans.” The students spent a day of community service working with the All Souls Episcopal Church

in the Lower Ninth Ward, took a walking tour of a Louisiana bayou, and spent two days soaking up the atmosphere, music and New Orleans cuisine at the French Quarter Festival. In addition to “laissez(ing) les bon temps roulez,” students gained a firsthand appreciation of the rich connection between music and culture that New Orleans epitomizes and experienced the satisfaction of lending a hand in the re-building of that culture. As a final project, each student created a PowerPoint presentation documenting and reflecting on the trip.

 

Part time instructor Russ Weis (Education and Writing & Literature) recorded a commentary for Vermont Public Radio

that aired the evening of May 5, just before Green Up Date. Titled “Thinking Green,” it focused on how we

can “green up” our lifestyles every day of the year. The text is available at www.vpr.net/episode/51084/.

 

Fall 2010

Professor Jacob White has had several pieces accepted for publication during his first semester of teaching at JSC. His interview with novelist Padgett Powell, titled “Not Having It Together: A Conversation with Padgett Powell,” was published in the New York Tyrant (Vol. 3, No. 2), a literary magazine devoted to the short story. Fictional pieces slated to appear in 2011 include “The Hour of Revision” in New South, “Your  Father Needs More Time” in The Literary Review, and both “The Oldest City” and “Episode Before Putting on Pants,” in Passages North. In addition, a creative nonfiction piece, “My Father at the Mountainside,” is slated  for publication in Phoebe. Jacob will present a paper at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in New Jersey next May.

Spring 2010

Professor Tyrone Shaw has had an immersion essay, "Sometimes even pigs get to play,” accepted for publication in the next issue of Saranac Review. It deals with the chaos in Romania immediately following the overthrow and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in December 1989. An “immersion essay” requires considerable

time spent on location.

In March, Professor Tony Whedon traveled to Matinicus Island, Maine, to write about the “Matinicus lobster wars” and a nonfatal shooting incident last summer involving two

lobstermen. The shooter just went to trial and was found not guilty. His account will cover dwindling natural resources, island family feuds dating back 100 years, and an island full of puffins that can be reached only by mail plane. Tony intends this piece for his new essay collection, Drunk in the Woods, which is due out next year along with his new poetry

collection, Things to Pray to in Vermont.

Fall 2009

The band PoJazz — featuring JSC faculty, staff and student poets and musicians — played at the Stearns Student Center Performance Space in September and December, and recently released a CD entitled Last Days: Live at the Black Door. Lead PoJazzer, Professor Tony Whedon was interviewed on VPR's Vermont Edition about the group in November, as well.