With future professional goals that include teaching, traveling, community organizing, publishing their own books, and more, the power of writing and literature is alive and well in these 2020 graduates of the Fresno State English Department.
March 25, 2020, was supposed to be a monumental day for Fresno State’s Department of English, as it was set to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its annual Young Writers’ Conference. But due to public health precautions for COVID-19, long-time conference coordinator Tanya Nichols had to do what so many artists have done during the pandemic — improvise.
“I am an anomaly. And because I am an anomaly, I will continue to create forward, give to poetry, make poems, explore the experimental, nurture spaces for communities on the margins, and foster the truths and anomalies in others through mentoring, workshops, and universities.”
“I felt situated between two worlds, two worlds that I could not entirely identify with; yet, two worlds that I considered home. Over time, I started to see this double consciousness as an advantage rather than a setback, as my bilingual and bicultural experiences have granted me a critical lens through which to look at the world.”
Kudos to #FresnoWriters is a regular series on the Fresno State MFA blog, celebrating the professional accomplishments of students, alumni, and faculty in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at Fresno State.
For the 10th annual conference, the English Department reunited with alumni who were part of the UCMLA journey, as either presenters or organizers or both, by inviting them back to campus for an anniversary reception, and an alumni roundtable and discussion.
Dr. Martin Paul, a professor emeritus of English at Fresno State and a self-taught specialist on poetry in translation, died in Sarasota, Florida on April 1 at the age of 82.