Uncategorized

English Major Dezanii Lewis graduated with a concentration in Creative Writing in Spring 2023. She describes here how she was selected to serve as the student commencement speaker. “I received an email from Associate Dean Banita Brown in March stating that I had been nominated by a faculty member as the student commencement speaker for […]

Dina Schiff Massachi, Lecturer, just published an edited volume focusing on the enduringly popular characters from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (McFarland Press). Chapter authors include Professor Mark West and former student Shannon Murphy (M.A. 2020). For more information and to order your own copy, please see here.

Forgotten Disney: Essays on the Lesser-Known Productions, co-edited by Professor Mark West, an expert in Children’s Literature, has been published by McFarland Press. This is Dr. West’s 21st book. In covering some of Disney’s “unfinished projects, unmet expectations, and box-office misses,” chapter authors from around the world provide “a more complex portrayal of the history […]

Creative Writing Instructor Angelina Brooks’ Poetry Chapbook Heavy Bloom has been published by Bottlecap Press. To learn more about the book and its author, please visit the Bottlecap Press website. Below is a poem from the book. Clemency The wind smooths dunes, sea oats, and sundew: a hand straightening a duvet. I wade, ankle-deep, and […]

The UNC Charlotte Alumni Association honored former English Major Kathleen Merritt (B.A. 1983) with the 2023 Distinguished Alumna Award. Merritt currently serves as senior vice president for radio, journalism and CSG services at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where she is responsible for leading efforts to distribute more than $300 million annually in community service […]

Allison Hutchcraft’s poem “Though from Here I Can’t Smell the Smoke” was awarded the third place prize in the highly competitive 2023 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Competition. These prizes “honor exceptional poems that help readers recognize the gravity of the vulnerable state of our environment” according to the Academy of American Poets who sponsors these […]

Professor West’s Theodore Roosevelt on Books and Reading brings together for the first time Roosevelt’s writings about his experiences as a reader, his scholarly essays about literature and literary history, and his exuberant reviews of some of the books that he especially liked. A sister volume to Mark I. West’s Theodore Roosevelt and His Library […]

Congratulations to Dr. JuliAnna Ávila on receiving the 2023 Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research for her book Critical Digital Literacies: Boundary-Crossing Practices, which was published by Routledge in 2021. This award was established in 2018 by the Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research to recognize the most outstanding […]

Creative Writing instructor Paula Martinac was recently awarded the 2023 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for an unpublished traditional mystery novel. This grant comes with a cash prize that will fund her attendance at the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, MD, April 28-30. Malice Domestic is an organization that supports the writing and reading of […]

Please read this April 2023 article in Exchange on CharlOz. CharlOz’s three-day interdisciplinary festival (September 27-29, 2024) explores how L. Frank Baum’s fairy tale timelessly reflects American values with its vast array of characters. Even as the Oz theme inspires new interpretations, it remains relevant, celebrating all representations of non-traditional characters. As Oz magic continues […]