Poetry Workshop Students Publish Anthology "Rona Writing"

 

Students in Barbara Henning's Fall 2020 Poetry Workshop 

collect their writing in a class anthology.

Click here for the pdf. "Rona Writing"

Humanities Division Award Ceremony 2019-2020

On Thursday, May 14th, the Department of English, Philosophy, and Languages hosted the annual Awards Ceremony in which we recognized those graduating from our undergraduate and graduate students. This ceremony celebrated all students graduating September 2019, January 2020, and May 2020.

Below, you'll find a list of all students recognized at the ceremony.

GRADUATING ENGLISH MAJORS / GRADUATE STUDENTS

Undergraduate

SUMMER 2019
Rachel Balagot
Cheyenne Thornton

FALL 2019
Dewyna Ahmad *
Martha Roldan *
Valerie Soto
Samson Ventress
Stacey Watson *

SPRING 2020
Ashton Burton
Ashvini Coomarsingham *
Tori Gray
Skyluar James *
Samantha Offenback
Lenah Spencer
Amber Wright *

* Sigma Tau Delta member

Graduate

FALL 2019
Breana Ricketts (MFA)
Carol Telpha (MFA)

SPRING 2020
Shuvanna Alam (MA, Literature)
Joseph Mannino (MFA)
Ogochukwu Bibiana Ossai (MFA)


ENGLISH MINORS
Kyleigh Barao

GENDER STUDIES MINORS
Sophia Joy Cox-Wright
Nicole Price
Stacey Watson


POPPER-EDELMAN AWARD WINNERS
First Year Writing: Zachary Embry (ENG 16)
Core Literature: Hannah Fleshyman (ENG 64)
Upper Division: Sara Mohamed (ENG 178)

ESTHER HYNEMAN GRADUATE AWARD IN POETRY
Joey Mannino

MARILYN BOUTWELL GRADUATE AWARD IN FICTION
Ogochukwu Bibiana Ossai


Recognition was also paid to former beloved members of the department who passed away: Seyemour Kleinberg (1933-2020) and Kimarlee Nguyen (1986-2020). The department also honored Lewis Warsh on the occasion of his retirement and Jacob Matkov for his service to the department.

Watch the slideshow presented during the ceremony here:

New books from Andrea Clark Libin, John High, and Michael Sohn!

Three former beloved members of our department have books forthcoming from Wet Cement Press! Andrea Clark Libin, John High, and Michael Sohn created hybrid works, "each mixing writing and visual art in a unique way."

Please see below for book covers and visit the Wet Cement Press website for information on ordering.

“A living, breathing, hybrid work unlike anything I've ever read—an orphan's notebook exhumed from the Moscow station and entrusted to your own red heart. An astonishing evocation of the subterranean universe of childhood, at once devastating and inspiring, a young girl's yearning for the world she's lost, for fresh strawberries, her birth name, and love; a fractured song of forgetting and remembering, and a testament to the death-defying power of art. ” —Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

“the hurricane’s eye of feeling, / whirl inside whirl, world / within world in John High’s / lush color incantations / hang like moons over the road / of his handwritten words / and their moments of attention / come alive within us as though / we were all nested in each other.” —Forrest Gander, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and author of Be With.

“Michael Sohn enlaces new meaning into language by interweaving letters with careful attention to their structure. Serifs, thicks and thins of strokes, ascenders and descenders, and the negative spaces of counters repeat in patterns obscuring words’ expected sounds and meanings and highlighting the visual potential of language. Sohn’s project moves past the manipulations of concrete poetry and into the landscape of formal beauty and the plastic arts." —Jaime Robles, author of Hoard and editor / designer of Cobalt Blue: Writings from the Papers of Sam Francis.

Reminder: 2020 Paumanok on Monday, March 2!

Don't forget our annual Paumanok event is taking place on Monday, March 2! Professor Parascandola will be in conversation with Tina Chang, Susan Choi, and Monique Truong in the Kumble Theater. They will also read from their work and sign books after the event.

Please see the flier for more details! 

Annual Paumanok Reading Series on March 2!

Our annual Paumanok series returns to LIU Brooklyn on March 2! We are delighted to announce three Asian American writers, Tina Chang, Susan Choi, and Monique Truong, living in Brooklyn will be taking the stage with Professor Louis Parascandola to give a reading and answer questions about their work.

For more information on the readers and the event, please see the flier below and visit co-sponsor Greenlight Bookstore's website.

See you on March 2!

Need a class? Try ENG 175!

Still looking for a class to round out your Spring 2020 schedule? Consider taking Professor Michael Bokor's ENG 175! 

Please find more details on the flier below!

Voice of Lefferts Reading

On January 7, English Professor Deborah Mutnick hosted an event for her Voice of Lefferts project at Greenlight Bookstore. 

Photo: Liz Dory

The event received publicity in Gothamist, stating "This ongoing community writing and documentary project celebrates the working-class, multiracial community in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens through writing, poetry, and art." 

Photo: Liz Dory

Neighborhood authors such as Dianna Sapp, Marcia Lloyd, Bernie Jones, Bob Marvin, and more were featured. 

Photo: Liz Dory

Professor Mutnick is the series editor and director for Voices of Lefferts. You can like and follow the Facebook page and share it widely!

Photo: Liz Dory

Lewis Warsh & Bernadette Mayer at Poetry Project

Faculty member Lewis Warsh and frequent guest Bernadette Mayer will be reading from their newly published collaborative collection of prose poems, entitled Piece of Cake at the Poetry Project on Friday December 6 at 8 PM. You can find more details and purchase tickets here.

Please see below for information on the book. Congratulations, Lewis and Bernadette!

From Station Hill Press: "Bernadette Mayer and Lewis Warsh wrote PIECE OF CAKE as a work of collaborative prose poetry, based on a process of each writing on alternate days in the course of August of 1976. It recounts the quotidian nuances of young, married-with-child life, the artistic path and citizenship in the town of Lenox, Massachusetts. It has the 'I did this, I did that; of a New York School poetry text, as characterized by the poetry of Frank O'Hara, and is somewhat reminiscent of Mayer's work STUDYING HUNGER JOURNALS, written not long before taking up PIECE OF CAKE. As Mayer writes on August 24th, 'I will go just one step further and take the liberty of saying that writing this book is different, for me, so completely different from any other experience I have ever had with writing. Now, when I sit down to write I tremble with fear before the page, and from the reactions of my body I can tell that the possibility of finally telling everything, and telling it as if it were all a series of plain household events, is at last coming closer.' This work is also distinguished as arguably the first significant male-female collaboration in 20th-century American poetry. Regarding the possible derivation of the work's title, and also exemplary of the work's tenor, is the start of Warsh's entry of August 29: 'I also recall getting up and eating a piece of left-over cake (a very sweet store-bought cake with green or possibly pinkish icing) and drinking a glass of milk at the kitchen window. Empty streets, no moon. Michael and Twinkie asleep on the floor of Bernadette's room, Guy and Karen in mine, Bill on the couch in the living room. Marie in her crib. Everyone "dead to the world," a phrase I dislike, what a full house.' This book also includes a section of photographs taken within the family from the period of PIECE OF CAKE’s composition."

Africa Forum on Friday Nov 15 at LIU!

The English, Philosophy, and Languages Department, along with the Department of Social Sciences presents Africa Forum. The topic The Chinese in Africa: A 21st Century Phenomenon. Students can take this course for 1 credit.

English Professor Michael Bokor will be presenting along with Professor Yusuf M. Juwayeyi. All pertinent details can be found on the flier. If you have any questions, please contact Professor Juwayeyi at yusuf.juwayeyi@liu.edu or 718-488-1168.

Jake Matkov reading for Same Page

Jake Matkov, current Academic Advisor for the English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages department, will be reading poetry at the Same Page Reading Series on November 13 at KGB Bar.

Please see the flier below for more information!