Recent News
Greetings from the UW’s Seattle campus. It’s springtime after cherry-blossom season. Starting in mid-March, 90-year-old cherry trees on the Quad sprout tiny pink buds. Anticipation builds; thousands of spectators from the campus and beyond look forward to a future they know is coming. And then one week later, the future arrives: 29 trees burst into pink-white bloom. The Quad is transformed. People dress in their graduation-wedding-day-family-photo… Read more
We have some truly impressive students here in the English Department! From plays to poetry to short stories to art installations, the range of interests and talent is hard to wrap one’s head around. But one thing is for certain: these influences make our campus richer and our classrooms more engaging. Congratulations to all on your accomplishments!
UW and National Awards and Recognition
Jacqueline Patterson read PhD candidate… Read more
Novels, Stories, and Poetry Collections
Exhibition Text, D. Frederick Thomas (MFA 2014)
Vagabond Press, October 2024
From the press:
Invited by a formerly estranged friend to write about her enigmatic new artwork for an upcoming show, an unnamed narrator makes the journey from Brisbane to… Read more
Ó Tuama, Professor Charles LaPorte, and PhD student Molly Porter
On Wednesday, April 2nd, the UW English Department had the honor of hosting celebrated poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama for a public lecture as part of the 8th Annual Lee Scheingold Lecture in Poetry and Poetics.
After… Read more
We are pleased to invite proposals for the University of Washington English Department Writing Programs’ fifth annual Praxis Conference, which will be held at the UW Seattle campus on Friday, May 30th, 2025. The theme for the conference is “Multiplicity” (understood broadly to include how to honor and support the multiplicity of our students’ identities, knowledges, modes of communication, and languages) and its possibilities as they relate to our teaching of English.
Proposals for… Read more
It is with sadness that we convey that Professor Emeritus Thomas Lockwood passed away on September 2, 2024. Professor Lockwood taught in the English department from 1967 to 2015 and was department chair from 1992 to 1997. His research focused on eighteenth-century satire, print culture, and the history of the novel. He is best known in his field for his three-volume edition of Henry Fielding’s plays and his 2023 book, The… Read more
Greetings from Padelford Hall, where I have been settling into the role as department chair. It is truly an honor – and an awesome responsibility – to lead a department that is as large, multi-faceted, and dynamic as English. I left New York – along with the bone-chilling winters and the humid-sticky summers – to join the UW English department over 18 years ago. In 2006, I arrived as an early-career scholar of contemporary African American… Read more
Promotion, Retention, and New Leaders
The English Department would like to extend special congratulations to Candice Rai and Jesse Oak Taylor for their promotions to the rank of Full Professor.
Additionally, congratulations are in order for… Read more
This year's crop of faculty books is nothing to sneeze at! Exploring themes from the Middle Ages to the present day, from the page to the stage to the screen to the classroom, these books are timely and thought-provoking. Each, of course, adds richness not just to the fields to which they contribute, but also to our department life. Congratulations to all our faculty authors!… Read more
With bittersweet emotions we announce the retirements of outstanding professors John Griffith, Rick Kenney, and Henry Laufenberg. We honor their work and want to take a moment to thank them for their years of contributions to our students, profession, and community.
John Griffith
Professor Griffith is a scholar of American literature, children’s literature, and the Bible as literature, teaching courses in all these… Read more