Naomi Jackson Fiction Workshop this Saturday!

Naomi Jackson joins us this Saturday at LIU Brooklyn for a generative fiction writing workshop.

Please see the flier for more details on how to attend!

Tony Iantosca reads for Broken Bells Reading Series

Tony Iantosca (MFA 2012) joins the line up for the Broken Bells reading series taking place on November 18th, 2018, at BERG'N (899 Bergen St in Brooklyn) from 7-9pm.

Members of the Broken Bells audience will be offered exclusive an exclusive happy hour deal.

Tony will join readers Adam Giannelli, Cassie Pruyn, and Asiya Wadud. Jess Feldman curated this month of the reading series, co-curated by MFA Program Advisor, Jake Matkov, and Hannah Ingram.

More details and RSVP here: the Facebook event.

Cynthia Cruz workshop POSTPONED

***THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED FOR SPRING 2019! PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS AT A LATER DATE***

Join us for a one day workshop with Cynthia Cruz! LIU alum can attend for free. Outside participants welcome, too! Please see the flier for more details...

Undergraduate Courses: Spring 2019

Graduate Courses: Spring 2019

Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award finalist!

Sigrid Nunez, Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Creative Writing MFA program (2015), was announced as one of five finalists for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her novel, The Friend, released earlier this year, has received rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review writes, "Nunez’s prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts—the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence."

The Friend is "[a] moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog."

Nunez joins other finalists Jamel Brinkley, Lauren Groff, Brandon Hobson, and Rebecca Makkai. You can read the full list of finalists for all categories on BuzzFeed Books.

New chapbook from Lisa Rogal + NYC Reading

Lisa Rogal (MFA 2013) has a new chapbook out by Ugly Duckling Presse (where MFA 2014 graduate, Daniel Owen currently works as editor and publicity director) this month! Feed Me Weird Things is described as being "about the importance of the unimportant: the quotidian, the overlooked, the natural world, the pain or beauty of longing, the persistence of uncertainty. With a voice at once irreverent and sincere, the poems enact meaning through attentiveness, ambiguity, and humor."

Karen Weiser writes of the chapbook: "Lisa Rogal’s Feed Me Weird Things is a pleasurable existential crisis. I mean, she asks what is the place of pleasure in the cultural mess we are in, which robs us of (almost) every last bit of possible gratification, or makes pleasure an ominous, dumb thing."

You can read more about the chapbook and buy it from Ugly Duckling Presse.

Lisa will be visiting NYC to give a reading on Thursday October 25th at Greenlight Bookstore (PLG location). You can find more details on UDP or Greenlight Bookstore.

Rosemary Mayer, TEMPORARY MONUMENTS

Long time English department adjunct, Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014), has a posthumous publication out from Soberscove Press. Temporary Monuments: Work By Rosemary Mayer, 1977-1982 "is the first comprehensive presentation of this body of work and includes Mayer’s documentation of these impermanent artworks. Mayer created photographs, writings, artists’ books, and drawings that expand the realm of these projects and reflect her interest in exploring ideas through a variety of media."

You can order the book from the press.

Also, check out a great review on Hyperallergic.

Jacob Matkov: Broken Bells Reading Series

Jacob Matkov (MFA Program Advisor) curates a new event for the Broken Bells reading series taking place on September 9th, 2018, at Local 61 (61 Bergen St in Brooklyn) from 7-9pm.

He will introduce readers Cathy Linh Che, Cynthia Cruz, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, and Jayson P. Smith.

Find more information on the Facebook event page!

Mark Dow: Plain Talk Rising

Former LIU adjunct faculty member and past Downtown Brooklyn contributor Mark Dow has self-published a collection of poems titled Plain Talk Rising, which is available for purchase here. If you would like to request a review copy, please email mdow@igc.org

Congratulations, Mark!

See below for more information:

"Mark Dow's Plain Talk Rising hovers above poetry and prose. It also transmutes one into the other, poetry into prose, and then back again, like an alchemist let loose in a writing workshop that may set alight our era of MFA's for good. 'The past, alight, hovers nearby with open eyes.' You will simply have to find your seat in the dark theater without flashlight or usher. Once seated, you will begin to identify with the author seated at his desk, dropping down the words toward the white landing area below. 'Oh and another thing.' (He is talking to you). The words stay there, falling into place when you have closed this unforgettable book, funny and wise."
            --David Rosenberg, author of A Literary Bible and co-author (with Harold Bloom) of The Book of J  

"A truly remarkable and challenging book."
            --Laurence Lieberman, author of The Creole Mephistopheles and Beyond the Muse of Memory: Essays on Contemporary American Poets

Mark Dow's Plain Talk Rising, before being "self-published," was a finalist in the Colorado Prize, New Issues, and Yale Series competitions (selected by Donald Revell, Linda Gregerson, and W.S. Merwin, respectively). It was also a semi-finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press.

Dow's poems and nonfiction have appeared in Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, Boston Review, Caribbean Review of Books, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Drunken Boat, Fascicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Paris Review, PN Review, SLAM! Wrestling, Southern Review, Threepenny Review, and Word for/Word, among many others. His e-chapbook "Feedback" and Other Conversation Poems(2015) is at Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics.

Dow is also author of American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (California, 2004) and co-editor of Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime (Routledge, 2002).

New publication & reading event from Professor Gary Racz

Professor Gary Racz of the Department of English, Philosophy and Languages has work in the new issue of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas “Nuevísimos: New Spanish American Writing” (no. 96, June 2018).

He will participate in the issue launch on Tuesday, October 2, 2018, from 5:00-8:00 p.m, reading his translations!

The event will take place at The City College of New York in the Faculty Dining Room, North Academic Center, 3rd floor. 160 Convent Avenue (@138th Street)

Please send your RSVP to either dshapiro@ccny.cuny.edu or rmartinez@ccny.cuny.edu

You will find more details on the attached flier.

Gary Racz: New Translations

Five play translations by Professor Gary Racz of the Department of English, Philosophy and Languages have appeared in The Golden Age of Spanish Drama: A Norton Critical Edition, edited by UCLA’s Barbara Fuchs: The Siege of Numantia by Miguel de Cervantes; Fuenteovejuna and The Dog in the Manger, both by Félix Lope de Vega; Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Trials of a Noble House by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Earlier versions of Fuenteovejuna and Life Is a Dream were published in The Norton Anthology of Drama, Vol. I (2009). Life Is a Dream first appeared in the Penguin Classics Series in 2006. Fuenteovejuna was similarly published as a stand-alone volume by Yale University Press’s Margellos World Republic of Letters Books in 2010 and was reprinted in The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. C, in 2012.

           

To date, Life Is a Dream has received six stagings:  at LIU Brooklyn’s Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts in 2007; by The Spanish Duke Company at Duke University’s Duke Theater in 2008; by A Festival of Fools in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in 2010; at Brigham Young University—Idaho’s Snow Black Box Theatre in 2011; at Hampden-Sydney College’s John Auditorium in 2013, and at Elmhurst College’s Mill Theatre in 2018.  Fuenteovejuna was performed as the M.F.A. production by Rogue Shakespeare of Mary Baldwin College at the Blackfriars Playhouse in 2014.  The Siege of Numantia, The Dog in the Manger, and Trials of a Noble House await their premieres in these new translations. By way of preview, here is Segismund, the newly freed heir apparent to the throne of Poland, addressing Rosaura, a lady-in-waiting to Stella, in Act II, scene vii, ll. 1593-1617 of Life Is a Dream: 

    No, say you are the sun, in whose domain

                                    Of fire the stellar bides,

                                    For Stella basks in rays your light provides.

                                    In all the fragrant realm

                                    Of flowers, there’s but one goddess at the helm,

                                    The rose, whom others call

                                    Their empress, being loveliest of all.

                                    I’ve seen the finest stones

                                    Extracted from the earth’s profoundest zones

                                    Revere the diamond’s shine,

                                    Their emperor as brightest in the mine.

                                    At lush courts in the sky

                                    Where stars from teetering republics vie,

                                    I’ve seen fair Venus reign

                                    As queen of all that vast and starred demesne.

                                    Mid perfect spheres I’ve seen

                                    The sun rule lesser orbs, which he’d convene

                                    At court, where he holds sway,

                                    Presiding as the oracle of day.

                                    How could a case arise,

                                    Then, where the planets, stones, and flowers prize

                                    Great beauty, yet yours serves

                                    A lady far less fair?  Your charm deserves

                                    More praise than hers bestows,

                                    Oh bright sun, Venus, diamond, star, and rose!

Patrick Horrigan: Reading in London

Professor Patrick E. Horrigan (English) will read from his new novel, Pennsylvania Station (Lethe Press), on Tuesday, July 24th @ 7:30pm at London's Royal Festival Hall as part of the "Polari" writers' salon hosted by journalist and writer Paul Burston. More details.

To get your copy of the book, click here.

Past Winners From Our Department: Newton Award and/or Krasnoff Award

The scrolling document below shows a list of past winners from our department of awards the University gives to faculty.

Here is a complete, university-wide list of all past winners of the Newton Award.

Kimarlee Nguyen: 2018 NYC Emerging Writers Fellow

The Center for Fiction has announced this year's nine NYC Emerging Writers Fellows, chosen from over 500 applicants, and we are very proud to note that Kimarlee Nguyen is among them. Each writer receives a grant of $5,000, the opportunity to work on a manuscript with a distinguished editor, the chance to read at public events at The Center, and more.

The winners were selected in a blind judging by a panel of three writers: Hannah Lillith Assadi (Sonora), Jaroslav Kalfar (Spaceman of Bohemia), and Weike Wang (Chemistry). 

Our congratulations to all the fellows -- especially Kimarlee Nguyen!

More info.

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Catherine Filloux: New Play

whatdoesfreemean? by Catherine Filloux (former English adjunct professor)

directed by Amy S. Green

with James Edward Becton, Brenda Crawley, Justin Jorrell,

Galway McCullough, Liz Morgan, and Lisa Strum as Mary

Tickets are on sale online now at bpt.me/3456198.

Only 12 performances!

LIMITED SEATING

July 6 - 22 at The Tank

312 West 36th Street, NYC

whatdoesfreemean? follows the journey of an African-American woman serving a long sentence for a non-violent drug offense. When Mary ends up in solitary confinement, she struggles to maintain her sanity. The play takes the audience into her psychic world. We travel alongside her self-guided intellectual and emotional journey into the nature of freedom, both physical and psychological, as Mary’s external and internal experiences unfold on stage in the present, in memory, and in the fantasies that help her survive.

whatdoesfreemean? is the latest work by award-winning human rights playwright Catherine Filloux. It was developed with the support of Nora’s Playhouse, a theatre collective dedicated to creating opportunities for women theatre artists of all generations to tell women's stories.
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Jake Matkov: Reading

Professor Jake Matkov (English) will be reading poems with a bunch of 4th and 5th graders from the Neighborhood School.

When

Friday, June 22, 2018. 

5-7 PM

Where

Berg'n

899 Bergen Street

Brooklyn

This "Baby Bells" event is part of the Broken Bells poetry reading series, which Matkov co-curates. More info below.

Deborah Mutnick: Fall 2018 English Course (Undergrad)

In Fall 2018, Professor Deborah Mutnick (English) is offering ENG 201 Ecocriticism & City Life. This course may be used by English majors as a Literature course or as a Writing & Rhetoric course. This course will also count towards the English minor.

T/Th 4:30-5:45 PM

For more info, contact Professor Mutnick.

To discuss whether the course will fit your program, book an appointment with Wayne Berninger.

First Year Writing Program, English 16, English 16X

English 16 seeks to initiate a dialogue among students that leads them to write with more than their own "personal" position in mind: the readings and classroom discussions give the sense that they are entering an ongoing conversation of consequence. To this end, students in English 16 are required to integrate the thoughts and words of other writers into their own essays. Both in relation to their own experience and to a text or set of texts, student writers in English 16 learn how to articulate and develop a sophisticated argument within a specific rhetorical situation. English 16X is a course parallel to English 16 for nonnative speakers who need additional work in English as a Second Language.

Philosophy & Goals

English 16/16X is our first-year composition course. For students who place into English 16/16X, it is their only required composition course; for those who place into 13/13X or 14/14X, it is their second or third course in the sequence. Thus, English 16/16X orients entering and transfer students to the requirements of college level reading and writing and builds on the rhetorical activities and skills other students have been taught in English 13/13X and 14/14X. Generally, students who place into English 16/16X can write fluent narratives, descriptive prose, and an impromptu, analytical essay, supported by evidence and examples from texts and their own experience and observations. English 16/16X students may still exhibit some difficulties with the skills, knowledge, and conventions of academic discourse, including reading comprehension and facility with Standard English, and rhetorical elements such as audience, genre, context, purpose, and argumentation. However, a grasp of these discursive and rhetorical elements must be minimally present at the beginning of the course and should be clearly evident by the end.

English 16/16X seeks to help students become critical readers and writers as they deepen their practice and knowledge of academic discourse through expository, analytical, argumentative, and research writing, and through intensive engagement with critical and creative texts. Students focus their writing on critical inquiry in preparation for Core Seminar and sophomore and upper level courses across the disciplines. By the end of the semester, they should be able to write a critical, thesis-driven essay with MLA-style documentation that utilizes a range of rhetorical strategies and a minimum of four sources.

Students learn/review invention strategies, such as free writing, clustering, process writing, and informal writing; rhetorical strategies such as comparison and contrast, cause-and-effect analysis, and recognition of logical fallacies; and grammar and punctuation, including greater attention to style, in relation to their writing assignments. They present their writing in a full class workshop on a regular basis.

All essays should go through a process of drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Twice in the semester, students submit a portfolio of their work that includes at the midterm one response paper, a research proposal, and reflective/self-evaluative writing on the proposal; and at the end of the term, an in-class essay, the research essay, and reflective/self-evaluative writing on the research essay.

The primary goal of English 16/16X is to help students become critical readers and writers to prepare them for academic and workplace success. By critically analyzing broad, cross-disciplinary themes such as food, work, and culture, students are able to reflect on their own experiences in light of literature, social criticism, and cultural analysis to enter into the “conversation” at the heart of academic discourse.

Learning Outcomes

Reading

By the end of English 16/16X, students should be fluent, critical readers of academic and literary genres, with strategies for researching and learning new concepts as well as appropriating other discipline-specific discourses. On the continuum from English 13/13X to Core Seminar, English 16/16X students should be able to:

• re-read and mark a text to develop an interpretation with an emphasis on critical analysis;
  
  
• identify several genres, including fiction and various kinds of nonfiction, such as analytical, argumentative, and informative essays;
  
  
• use increasingly sophisticated texts both as source material and writing models;
  
  
• select appropriate information sources such as databases, and evaluate primary and secondary sources for their credibility and usefulness.

Writing

By the end of English 16/16X, students should be able to write college-level, clear, reasonably correct, critical-analytical essays, and use writing as a tool for thinking and learning. On the continuum from English 13/13X to Core Seminar, English 16/16X students should be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of rhetoric—purpose, audience, context, and voice—across several genres;
  
  
• use writing for expression, inquiry, analysis, argumentation, research, and communication;
  
  
• demonstrate an understanding of writing as a multi-step process involving invention, drafting, revising, collaborating, editing, and proofreading;
  
  
• apply research skills to the development of a thesis, and integrate primary and secondary sources into an analysis or argument;
  
  
• apply appropriate formatting conventions and standard English usage;
  
  
• understand and take advantage of the differences between print and electronic composing processes.

 All the above goals will be adapted with sensitivity toward students whose first language is not English.

Writing Requirements

• 14-20 pages of finished academic writing to consist of: one 4-6 page evidence-based essay (a model for the later, more advanced research essay; 2+ sources from course readings); one 4-6 page research proposal and annotated bibliography (research question; plan of development; annotated bibliography with summary, evaluation, and proposed use of each source; 3+ sources, including at least one from library); one 6-8-page research essay (based on course's thematic focus; 4+ sources from research proposal and annotated bibliography).
  
  
• 6-12 pages of marked, evidence-based writing exercises and self-assessment, comprising some combination o the following recommended exercises: summary and analysis (including citations), sythesis (including citations), in-class essay (including citations), reflective/self-assessment letter (introducing portfolio, based on earlier reflective writing about evidence-based essay, research proposal, research essay).
• Participatory writing to include diagnostic essay (based on one short reading of college-level caliber), exercises in writing from sources (practice in summary, paraphrase, quotation, integrating sources, documentation; based on course readings), formal writing (journals, in-class writing, free-writing, blogging; based on course readings).

  Portfolio Requirements

• Midterm Portfolio (optional): evidence-based essay, with drafts; evidence-based writing exercises
  
  
• Final Portfolio (required): reflective/self-assessment letter; evidence-based writing exercises; evidence-based essay with drafts; research proposal with drafts; research essay with two drafts attached.

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First Year Writing Program, English 14, English 14X

English 14 students develop their reading, writing and formal rhetorical skills. Not only do students learn to read and write about a variety of texts, they also learn to compose rhetorically sophisticated essays that take into account purpose, context, and audience. Students learn strategies for creating effective written arguments. English 14X is a course parallel to English 14 for nonnative speakers who need additional work in English as a Second Language.

Philosophy & Goals

English 14/14X, the second course in our developmental writing sequence, both builds on the rhetorical activities and skills students learn in English 13/13X and orients students who place between 13/13X and 16/16X to the requirements of academic and workplace writing. Generally, students placed into English 14/14X demonstrate fluency and clarity in narrative and descriptive writing but still exhibit some difficulties with the fundamental conventions of academic discourse, including reading comprehension, knowledge of rhetorical elements such as audience, genre, context, purpose, and modes, and awareness of Standard English, syntax, grammar, and mechanics.

English 14/14X seeks to help students go beyond personal narrative to engage with more complex academic discourse through intensive reading and writing of critical and creative texts. Students read a variety of genres, including poetry, editorials, short stories, novels, essays, and nonfiction. They are introduced to rudimentary research skills of evaluating, integrating, and citing sources. By the end of the semester, they should be able to write a thesis-driven essay that integrates at least two course readings using MLA-style parenthetical documentation.

Students continue to learn different invention strategies, such as free writing, clustering, process writing, and informal writing; they review rhetorical strategies learned in English 13/13X and add others to them such as definition, division, and classification; and they review basic grammar and punctuation in relation to their writing assignments. They present their writing in a full class workshop on a regular basis. All essays should go through a process of drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. Twice in the semester, students submit a portfolio of their work that includes formal essays with drafts and revisions, in-class essays, and reflective/self-evaluative writing.

Although better prepared for college-level work than students who place into English 13/13X, English 14/14X students remain at risk for academic failure, and student retention continues to be a primary course goal. English 14/14x promotes critical literacy with an emphasis on the thesis-driven essay. It combines acquisition of academic discourse through practice of reading and writing skills with a meta-cognitive focus on language, the writing process, and rhetoric.

By critically examining themes such as language and literacy that encourage meta-cognitive awareness of texts and their own experiences, students are primed to improve both their writing skills and their chances of academic success.

Learning Outcomes

Reading

By the end of English 14/14X, students should be fluent, critical readers of several genres, with strategies for appropriating new language, concepts, and discourses. On the continuum from English 13/13X to Core Seminar, English 14/14X students should:

• continue to build on skills of fluency, comprehension, and interpretation, with an increasing emphasis on analysis;
  
  
• understand the need to reread and appropriately mark and annotate a text to develop a “reading”;
  
  
• be conversant with several genres, including fiction, nonfiction narrative, and the analytical essay;
  
  
• have practice using texts both as source material and writing models;
  
• practice close reading strategies such as paraphrasing, summarizing, marginal notation, and locating key words; and
  
  
• have practical knowledge of library, Internet, and research skills, including evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing primary and secondary sources.
  
  

Writing

By the end of English 14, students should be able to write clear, reasonably correct, thesis-driven, expository essays. On the continuum from English 13 to Core Seminar, English 14 students should:

• gain rhetorical knowledge of purpose, audience, context, voice across genres, including personal narrative and the expository essay;
  
  
• use writing for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating;
  
  
• understand writing as a staged process involving invention, drafting, revising, and editing;
  
  
• learn to use rhetorical strategies of definition, division, and classification;
  
  
• engage in peer editing and writing workshops;
  
  
• learn basic library, Internet, and research skills and concepts, including thesis development, integration of primary and secondary sources, citation, documentation, and how to avoid plagiarism;
  
  
• develop control over the conventions of format and writing, including syntax, grammar, mechanics, and punctuation; and
  
  
• become acquainted with a variety of writing technologies, including basic word processing and computer skills, Web navigation, and multi-media tools like PowerPoint.

 All the above goals will be adapted with sensitivity toward students whose first language is not English.

Writing Requirements

• 3 formal (4-6-page) essays with drafts, including 1 critical narrative and 2 thesis-driven essays utilizing a range of rhetorical strategies
  
  
• 2 in-class essays (minimum), one of which will be a 2-stage essay
  
  
• Reflective/self-evaluative writing for each formal essay or twice a semester
  
  
• Practice in summary/paraphrase/quotation
  
  
• Informal writing (e.g., journals, in-class writing, free-writing, blogging)

 Portfolio Requirements

• Midterm Portfolio (optional): one finished essay, with drafts attached; in-class essay
  
  
• Final Portfolio: two finished essays, with drafts attached; two-stage, in-class essay

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