Parker’s stories and poems focus on experimental forms and themes of family. She enjoys writing sci-fi and fantasy — like she has since she was a kid — but her interests in poetry, literary fiction and visual storytelling are expanding.
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Author, translator, and University of Virginia associate professor Carmen Lamas will deliver the keynote address for Fresno State’s eighth annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on December 12 and 13. The theme for this year’s SESA symposium is “Translations.”
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Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing will host two author readings this fall — one featuring the program’s faculty authors, and one with a pair of acclaimed writers from the American South.
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Fresno State alumna Samantha Golden works full-time as the recreation director at Gymnastics Beat and part-time as a writer for the Clovis Roundup community newspaper.
Read More![Photo: Hmong American poet Soul Vang. [Credit: May Yang-Vang.]](https://fresnostatecah.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/soul-vang-header.png?w=750)
Fresno State’s Creative Writing Alumni Chapter, in collaboration with the Fresno Poets’ Association series, will present its second annual Fresno Writers Summit. The event celebrates new books by four alumni authors and features a keynote reading from trailblazing Hmong-American poet Soul Vang.
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Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing announced Southern California author William Archila won the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest
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Dr. Stanley Poss, a Fresno State professor emeritus of English, passed away on Dec. 14, 2023, in Fresno. He was 96.
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Fresno State’s Department of Theatre and Dance, in collaboration with the Department of English’s MFA Creative Writing Program, presents “Lit Night” at the Dec. 5 performance of “Seminar.”
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With $2,905 in initial gifts from 39 students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community friends — most of those coming during Fresno State’s annual Day of Giving campaign — the English Department successfully established the new English Department Scholarship fund in 2022.
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More than 100 writers will gather in Fresno’s Tower District on Saturday, Oct. 14 for LitHop 2023, the city’s free literary festival.
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The College of Arts and Humanities welcomes new faculty Michele McConnell to the Department of English. Dr. McConnell specializes in literacy studies, adolescent literacies, critical literacy, and collaborative and participatory writing practices.
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Celebrating the professional accomplishments of students, alumni, and faculty in Fresno State’s Department of English and Creative Writing Program.
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Dr. Eugene Zumwalt, a Fresno State professor emeritus of English, passed away on July 27 in Tollhouse, California. He was 99.
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By Jefferson Beavers, communication specialist, Department of English Two brand-new Fresno State alumni have begun their summers with full-time jobs that were secured and started months before finishing their undergraduate studies in the English Department. Literature major Beth Contreras started working as a legal assistant for the Fresno County Public Defender’s office in April, and […]
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The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing announced Georgia author Éric Morales-Franceschini has won the 2022 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of his debut full-length poetry collection, “Syndrome.”
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Dr. Toni Wein, a Fresno State professor emerita of English, passed away on Dec. 17, 2022, after a bout with brain cancer. She was 70.
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Three alumni authors from Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing published their debut books in 2022.
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Author and Central Valley native Manuel Muñoz will deliver the keynote address for Fresno State’s sixth annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on December 8 and 9. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Transcending Boundaries: Finding Hope in the Now.”
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Dozens of English Department alumni over the years have gone on to develop successful library careers.
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Dr. H. Ray McKnight, a Fresno State professor emeritus of English, passed away on Aug. 5 in Richmond, California. He was 88.
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Dr. Steve Adisasmito-Smith, a Fresno State associate professor of English, passed away on July 10. He was 57.
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Facing obstacles of all kinds — including earning the bulk of their degrees in a global pandemic — these 2022 graduates of Fresno State’s English Department have all found ways to use writing and literature to thrive.
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Now a graduate student, Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras won the Mireyda Barraza Martinez Prize for Social Justice Writing twice as an undergraduate in 2020 and 2021.
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“Janette is a wonder and a marvel: the word that best describes her is ‘ardent.’ She is impassioned and energetic, yet always shows care and respect for others. With deep roots in the Central Valley, Janette is an advocate for the transformational power of education,” said Steve Adisasmito-Smith, associate professor of comparative and world literature, Department of English.
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“After graduating, I plan to teach at the college level and to continue work as an editor and start my own literary journal that focuses on experimental genre fiction from BIPOC, queer, fat and disabled communities.”
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“I have devoted my professional and academic work to supporting positive change within my community and I hope to continue my work at the City college level after graduation. Working to support one another and fostering a sense of agency, be it in formal or informal learning contexts is intrinsic to humanity.”
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Maya Pindyck has won the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of her book, “But the Orange Tree.”
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More than 100 writers will gather in Fresno’s Tower District on Saturday, Oct. 16 for LitHop 2021, the city’s free literary festival.
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Kudos to #FresnoWriters is an ongoing series republished from the Fresno State MFA blog, celebrating the professional accomplishments of students, alumni, and faculty in Fresno State’s Creative Writing Program and the Department of English.
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The College of Arts and Humanities welcomes new faculty Dr. René M. Rodríguez-Astacio to the Department of English.
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Kudos to #FresnoWriters is an ongoing series on the Fresno State MFA blog, celebrating the professional accomplishments of students, alumni, and faculty in Fresno State’s Creative Writing Program and the Department of English.
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Dr. Kenneth Froelich, professor of music, was selected for Fresno State’s 2021 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching,
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Fresno State alumna Megan Anderson Bohigian has been named the City of Fresno’s fifth poet laureate, serving as the city’s literary ambassador.
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“[I]t’s my lifelong goal to continue showing the joys of interconnected humanities to more future young minds in Fresno.” ~ Harrison Martin
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“For someone like me to be here, there was a lot of luck involved, my own hard work and persistence, timely opportunities, but most of all, the support from family and community. Their care and acknowledgement drive me.” ~Jer Xiong
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“I’ve made a future goal to inspire and encourage each of my students to engage, learn, and enjoy the education that they will be receiving in my classroom.” ~ Claudia Amador
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Fresno State’s Department of English will host multiple distinguished authors and scholars this spring for virtual campus visits.
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Six students were named as winners in the 4th Annual Art Song competition at Fresno State. During the competition, the poetry and composition finalists worked with vocalists to perform original works during the festival
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The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing announced Texas author E.C. Belli has won the 2020 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of her second book, “A Sleep That Is Not Our Sleep.”
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Zoyer Zyndel, a Fresno State alumnus known for his community volunteering and advocacy, particularly with the Central Valley’s LGBTQ communities, died in Fresno on Dec. 26. He was 34.
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Just one week after his first book finished as a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, author and Fresno State alumnus Anthony Cody’s yet-to-be-published second book won a top regional award for distinguished master’s thesis.
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Dressed up in black, with a bowtie, burgundy jacket and matching burgundy Pumas, author and Fresno State alumnus Anthony Cody waited with anticipation in the virtual green room for the 71st National Book Awards to be announced.
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Dr. Jean E. Pickering, a feminist literary scholar and Fresno State professor emerita of English, passed away on Sept. 15. She was 87.
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Author and Fresno State alumnus Anthony Cody’s debut poetry collection, “Borderland Apocrypha,” has been named a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.
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The book hatching will be a virtual gathering to launch the recent publication of poets Juan Felipe Herrera and Anthony Cody’s new poetry collections, “Every Day We Get More Illegal” and “Borderland Apocrypha.”
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Fresno State alumni authors Anthony Cody and Sara Borjas were recognized with national praise for their debut poetry collections.
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Meet Jenny Krichevsky, a specialist in rhetoric and writing studies, in conversation with English Department communication specialist Jefferson Beavers. Dr. Krichevsky is new to California, relocating from Amherst, Massachusetts.
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The Fresno State Creative Writing Alumni Chapter presents #FresnoWriters Live, a virtual reading to celebrate the new story collection “Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall,” the sixth book from Fresno writer Daniel Chacón.
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“I hope that in the poems that I read tonight, about Fresno and the Valley, that you will recognize some of the landscape and some of the experiences.” – Sherley Anne Williams, February 5, 1986
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In a two-week span in March, Fresno State’s Department of English welcomes four nationally renowned and best-selling authors to campus to share their voices and literary art.
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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.
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English faculty Dr. Melanie Hernandez will deliver a keynote address entitled “Race, Ephemera, and the Archive” as part of the third annual Students of English Studies Association Symposium on Dec. 12 and 13 on campus.
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These educators are dedicated teachers with a range of classroom experiences — from graduate teaching associate positions at Fresno State, to area high schools and community colleges — and they represent the latest standouts among our English and Creative Writing graduate program alumni who’ve decided to keep their higher-ed teaching work at home in the Central Valley.
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Faculty ovations are a regular series to applaud our faculty for their achievements in the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State. Their hard work and accomplishments directly impact our students, college, university, and the wider community.
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Fajardo-Anstine is the author of Sabrina and Corina, longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction.
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Dr. Lisa Weston has taught a variety of Medieval Literature courses at Fresno State. She was born in England and raised there and in Canada before immigrating to the United States. She received her Ph.D. in 1982 from UCLA, where she studied Old and Middle English, Medieval Latin, Norse and Celtic literatures.
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Lacy M. Johnson is author of “The Reckonings” (Scribner, 2018), which was named a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in criticism and one of the best books of 2018 by the Boston Globe, Electric Literature, Autostraddle, Book Riot, and Refinery29.
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Fresno State’s locally grown, nationally known literary magazine, The Normal School, will become an online-only publication starting this fall, ending an 11-year run as a printed periodical. The Spring/Summer 2019 issue of the magazine, due to hit bookstores by late August, will be its last physical issue.
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Kudos to #FresnoWriters is a monthly 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.
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In these writings, the authors often achieved that highest accomplishment of art: they worked with the raw material of pain–their own or the world’s–and transmuted it into a thing of beauty.
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Kudos to #FresnoWriters is a monthly 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.
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“I strongly believe in the value of not turning away from science or business or social sciences if you are grounded in the arts, and vice-versa.” – Leo Rowland
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The Provost’s Awards were established in 1993 to recognize the outstanding teaching, research and service that is central to the mission of Fresno State. Honorees provide students with a stimulating environment that fosters learning and affirms the University as an intellectual and cultural leader in the Central Valley.
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Fresno State alumna Marisol Baca is the City of Fresno’s fourth Poet Laureate. She will be the first woman to serve as the city’s literary ambassador.
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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.
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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.
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Megan Evans, who will complete her M.A. in English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Writing studies has engaged in advanced scholarship through coining the term “rogue feminism” as a way of naming a rhetorical phenomenon she observed in social media platforms.
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In the Fall of 2018, a serious car accident fractured Krystal Cantu’s spine in three places — challenging her determination to continue her education. In her perseverance, she has continued to thrive in her education — earning further respect from the English department faculty and colleagues.
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Compiled by Jefferson BeaversRepublished from “We Grow Writers” Kudos to #FresnoWriters is a new monthly 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. J.J. Anselmi (MFA Creative Writing alumni) — Announced the publication of his second […]
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The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing will feature a Pulitzer Prize finalist, the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry winner, and two of its accomplished new faculty authors in its Spring 2019 Fresno Poets’ Association reading series.
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“Utopias” are societies, both literary and lived, imaginary and actual, that strive for the creation of a more ideal community and world. While utopias are often built upon problematics, philosophical inconsistencies, and tensions, the study of these attempts causes one to pause and consider how to make our reality a better place for all.
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Fresno Writers Live will feature the latest poetry and prose from 12 Fresno writers in four storytelling and spoken-word shows. The shows will include four MFA grad students, four alumni authors from the Fresno State Creative Writing Alumni Chapter, and four faculty authors from the Department of English.
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The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing announced California author Mark Irwin as the winner of the 2018 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of his 10th book, “Shimmer.”
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The Fresno State Creative Writing Alumni Chapter presents “Hot Off the Press 3” from 4 to 6 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 2 at Full Circle Olympic, 1426 N. Van Ness Ave., in the Tower District.
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Seven alumni authors from the Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing published their first books in 2017 and 2018, following a record publishing year in 2016. In total, 15 of the program’s alumni have now published their first books in the past three years.
Read More~ By Jefferson Beavers, communication specialist, Department of English English faculty and award-winning translator Dr. Steve Adisasmito-Smith will deliver a keynote address entitled “The Humanities: An Evolving Hope” as part of the second annual Students of English Studies Association symposium on Dec. 13 and 14 on campus. Dr. Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, dean of the College of […]
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~ By Jefferson Beavers, communication specialist, Department of English So how do you go from being a traveling hardware salesman and college dropout to landing your dream teaching job at your high school alma mater? You can ask recent Fresno State alumnus Jacob Simmons about his “15-Year Plan.” Simmons, a first-generation college student who returned […]
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College of Arts and Humanities undergrads Kelsi Stieler, Kaylee Gutierrez, and Kristin Bonillas have utilized their talents and collaborated to write, illustrate and publish a children’s book. “The Tree Tales” book, which is available on Amazon, centers around the importance of environmental conservation and teaches kids what they can do to help. “A large part […]
Read MoreThe English Department’s British Romantic Literature class will be performing the 1823 adaptation of “Frankenstein” on the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s novel. The play “Presumption: or, the Fate of Frankenstein” will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 31 in the Peters Business Building auditorium Room 191. While Professor Toni Wein began her career […]
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The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State is the largest college on campus, encompassing nine departments, and the Armenian Studies Program. Each year, new faculty are brought on to elevate the academic offerings here at Fresno State. These new faculty members bring innovative research, diverse fields of study and technical expertise to our […]
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For Howard and Laurel Hendrix, raging California wildfires are personal. In addition to teaching in the Fresno State English Department, the husband and wife team are active community volunteers in fire prevention.
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Dr. J. Ashley Foster and Dr. Alexander Adkins Jaramillo both join the Department of English as new faculty members.
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The College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State 