This year’s roll call of exceptional student achievements features variety! Sure, you will see the standard publications of criticism, poetry and fiction. But also: an award-winning stage play, speculative fiction, a study of the impact of English language requirements on Turkish undergraduates, and an audio/visual project set in Piper’s Creek. The range of work our talented graduate students produce is truly remarkable. Congratulations to all (and various) hats in the ring!
Publications and Writing Awards
Andreas Bassett, K. Meera and K. C. Smith were recently awarded an honorarium and selected to publish speculative writing in The Henry Art Gallery's Interpretive Guide, which accompanies the Kelly Akashi: Encounters exhibit. Congratulations to all three!
Gust Burns has published an article, "Antimmanent Images: Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Anti-Black Temporal Prohibition, Thinking Deleuze and Afropessimism with Cinema," in the fall issue of Cultural Critique. Nice work Gust!
The scholarly consortium Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) has announced Ph.D. student Francesca Colonnese as winner of the Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize. Colonnese’s paper "Slow Motion, Slow Time: Perceptual Events in ‘The Lady of Shalott’” investigates the temporal perceptual phenomenon of tachypsychia within Tennyson’s famous poem. Combining cognitive science and poetics, INCS celebrates this essay as “blazing a new and exciting trail.” Well done Francesca!
Rasheena Fountain’s poem “Not An ‘Other’ Climate Poem”, published as a 2022 Summer Poetry Contest finalist in Solstice, was recently nominated for a Sundress Publications Best of the Net award. Congratulations Rasheena!
E. J. Koh's debut novel The Liberators, starred by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, has been published by Tin House Books. The Liberators was featured on NPR's All Things Considered with host Ari Shapiro. You can order the book here or anywhere books are sold. E.J's life and work are also profiled in Poets & Writers Magazine's "Love, Loss, and Liberation." This is not the first time we’ve congratulated E.J., nor we suspect the last.
Recent graduate student and current Lecturer Alan Williams' article "Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific," published in American Studies 61, no. 4 (2022): 31-63, is finally available to read on Project Muse. Thanks for letting us know Alan!
PhD student Furkan Kir's research article “English-medium instruction (EMI) as the great (un)equaliser: experiences of former EMI students in Turkey” has been published in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. Kir’s article explores the experiences of students who dropped out of an English-medium university in Turkey and postulates that strict English proficiency requirements at some Turkish universities pose a problem for many students. Fine work Furkan.
Molly Porter's article “’Damn the Empire!’: Imperial Excess, National Nostalgia, and Metaphysical Modernism in the Poetics of Parade’s End” has appeared in the special issue "Ford Madox Ford's War Writing" in the April 2024 publication of Humanities. Congratulations, Molly!
The Kennedy Center recently named graduate student Jack Wolfram's play, Paradise Untapped, as a regional semi-finalist for the 2024 John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play. A portion of Wolfram’s play was staged alongside three other rising playwrights' works at the Region VII Festival in Spokane, WA. Paradise Untapped’s premise is proper clever:
Paradise Untapped, a one-act play rooted in critical fabulation, tells the story of Deborah Milton and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The two entered our world a lifetime apart in England to different world-renown intellectuals, tethered across time by a shared fiery intellect and creative compulsion. Both yearn to make a name for themselves and do right by their gifts, tell stories that will be remembered, but doing so proves diametrically opposed to their respective circumstances.
Congratulations Jack!
MFA student Simon Graham is one of the 2024 Association of Writers and Writing Programs' Intro Journals Project Winners, in the fiction category.
Awards and Honors
Jennie Baker, Abygail Gutierrez, and Jack Wolfram have each earned highly competitive Disability Travel Awards from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs), the largest conference in the field of writing studies. These awards recognize "scholarship dedicated to improving knowledge about the intersections of disability with composition and rhetoric, the value of disability as a source of diversity, inclusive practices and the promotion of access, and the value of disability as a critical lens" and provide funding to help cover the costs of attending the 2024 CCCC conference being held in Spokane. Congratulations!
Also in the 4Cs category, PhD student Anselma Prihandita has been awarded a 2024 Scholars for the Dream Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. This prestigious award funds travel to the convention and confers an opportunity to connect with important mentors outside of our home institution. Nice work Anselma!
Ph.D. student, Andreas Bassett was recently selected as the Bibliographical Society of America's Katharine F. Pantzer New Scholar and has been invited to speak at the upcoming 2024 Bibliographical Society of America annual meeting. Quite the honor – good going Andreas!
Remember Rasheena Fountain, from about a page up, publishing award winning poetry? As a current Ph.D. student in English and MFA graduate (‘21), Rasheena will be a featured artist at the new Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx) on Oregon State’s campus in Fall 2024. Fountain’s “Dropped Down Blues” Black speculative and blues audio-visual project, set in Pipers Creek during salmon migration, will be featured in the exhibition How to Carry Water: Memory in Three Questions. The exhibition brings together contemporary visual artists and humanities scholars in shared observations and questions about watersheds. So interesting Rasheena, congrats!
And Tenzin Sangpo, a second year MFA student, was declared a “Dalai Lama Graduate Scholar – 2023" by the Ganden Phodrang Foundations of the Dalai Lama. What an honor Tenzin!
E. J. Koh has been named a finalist for the 2024 Young Lions Fiction Award by The New York Public Library and Young Lions for her novel The Liberators.
Recent PhD student Matt Poland has been awarded the English department’s Heilman Dissertation Prize.
Undergraduate student Julia Park has been selected as one of six gonfalonieres—banner carriers—to represent the College at the UW Seattle Commencement ceremony and to lead undergraduate students into Husky Stadium. Gonfalonieres are graduating seniors who exemplify the College’s core values of excellence, inquiry, community, accountability, integrity and citizenship.
Julia Park and undergraduate student Emily Tang have been selected to the Husky 100. Each year, the Husky 100 recognizes 100 undergraduate and graduate students from the UW Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma campuses in all areas of study who are making the most of their time at the University of Washington.
And finally, undergraduate student Adam Briejer has been awarded a Mary Gates Research Scholarship. Mary Gates Research Scholarships enhance the educational experiences of undergraduates engaging in faculty guided research. Last year Adam won the English Department’s Tia Vall-Spinosa Sullivan Scholarship. Way to go Adam!Simpson Center and UW Scholarships and Fellowships
Post45 Research Symposium: Janine "Nina" Hsiao Sobers and Colleagues
Simpson Center Cross-disciplinary Research Cluster Grant: Nikita Willeford Kastrinos (Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies)
Simpson Center Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship for "Mearcstapa Translations": Amelia Lehosit
Simpson Center Society of Scholars fellowship to support work on "The Purchase of Playbooks: Reading Drama and Shopping for Books in Early Modern England": Andreas Bassett
Simpson Center Society of Scholars fellowship to support work on "Ralph Werther/Jennie June: A Critical Trans History, 1870-1925": JohnMorgan Baker
Simpson Center Society of Scholars fellowship to support work on "Hauntological Poetics: Repurposing 18th-19th Century Historical Documents in Contemporary American Poetry": Anne Duncan
Simpson Center Society of Scholars fellowship to support work on "State of Power and Transpacific Crossing in Marcos Era Literature": Kathleen Escarcha
English Department Awards and Prizes
Graduate Fellowships
Hilen Summer Research Award: August Adent, Angel Garduño, Michaella Gonzalez-Garduño, Jacob Grace, Abygail Gutierrez, Furkan Kir, Kaitlyn Kretsinger-Dunham, Molly Porter, Kexin Song
Phyllis F. and Donald E. Dorset Fellowship: JohnMorgan Baker, Andreas Bassett, Megan Butler, Jianfeng He, Nanya Jhingran
Padelford Endowed Fellowship: Jacob Oliver, Alex Romero
Creative Writing Prizes
Derek Hwang--Joan Grayston Prize
Sanjana Ramesh (G) Eugene Van Buren
Undergraduate Scholarships
Adam Ramer--Eilert Anderson Scholarship
Frederick Lu--Edward Cox Scholarship
Maizy Green--Argentina Daley Endowed Fund
Lena "Ruby" Storey--Robert Heilman Scholarship
Maizy Green--Roger Sale Scholarship
Glika Mitro--Tia Vall-Spinosa Sullivan Scholarship
Samuel Abraham--Lucky Budd Waller Scholarship
Riley Hull--Peter Thorpe Scholarship
Gabe Cortina--Gamma Phi Beta Scholarship
Emmalee Heins--Kollar Scholarship
Keira Murphy--Charles H. Krysieniel
Jaime Stout--Dave and Joan Empfield Endowed Scholarship*
Tristyn Struve--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Adam Ramer--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Frederick Lu--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Mitro Glika--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Samuel Abraham--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Riley Hull--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Gabe Cortina--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Emmalee Heins--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Keira Murphy--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Lena "Ruby" Story--John Kimball Woolley Scholarship
Undergraduate Prizes
Riley Hull--Hilen Essay Prize
Ari Snyder--Honors Thesis Prize
Creative Writing Prizes and Awards
Sara Cline--Academy of American Poets Prize
Binh Tang-- Bentley Prize (Prose)
Anne Duncan--Bentley Prize (Poetry)
Sydney Hwang--Joan Grayston Prize
Simon Graham--David Guterson Prize
Wen Eckelberg--Arthur Oberg Prize
Justine Huggins--Charlotte Paul Reese Award
Kathie Wu--Eugene Van Buren Award
Creative Writing Scholarships
Nicole Pannucci--Edith K. Draham Scholarship
Emma Reiss--Stephanie Dassel Barden Endowed Scholarship