Already it’s April. A few weeks of classes and exams, a mountain of papers, some painful good-byes, and summer will be here.

The department has been busy with a number of projects through the year. Foremost among them was the department review that began in the fall with a self-study. Our students were influential through their comments in the focus groups, and the faculty compiled a wealth of information about what we’re doing and what we’re not. The external review team visited in March to conduct interviews and reflect on the strengths and weakness of the department. We will reflect on their report during a department retreat at the end of the year, and then we’ll set an agenda for ourselves for the coming years to make improvements.

It’s been another year of impressive productivity for our faculty. Our website lists another collection of faculty books for the 2006-07 academic year, and the articles, stories, poems, essays, and conference presentations continue to flow from the English faculty. At the same time, the quality of teaching rises higher and higher—full classes, new topics, innovative approaches, individual care, special projects, field trips, invited speakers, fresh pedagogical experiments. The easiest part of my job as department chair is bragging about my remarkable colleagues.

This has also been a year of farewells. The year opened with the retirement celebrations for Jack Ridl. There aren’t many places around the country where a thousand people would show up for a poetry reading, but Jack’s distinguished career and the twenty-year history of a successful Visiting Writers Series have made Holland a place where poetry matters. He has set a high standard in establishing our creative writing program and in showing us how to teach in the ways that matter most in the lives of students, and we’ll do our best to honor and extend all that he has done. But it won’t be the same without Jack.

As the year closes, we bid farewell also to Karima Jeffrey. Karima has been at Hope since 2001 and has been instrumental in expanding our offerings in African American and Caribbean literatures. She has devoted great energy and passion to many student groups on campus and to the cultural and religious life of our community. We wish Karima well as she moves on to the next chapter of her career.

One joy of an academic career is meeting the new students every August, but that’s matched by the melancholy of saying good-bye in May to the students who have walked the Lubbers’ hallways, sat in our classrooms, visited our offices, and become valued colleagues and friends over four years. We will miss you! Please drop us a note from time to time to keep us informed about your life. Did you know that several times each week, emails circulate through the department with news from our alumni—a grad school acceptance or graduation, a first publication, a marriage, a book, a job, a child. We’re eager to share the breaking news of your life as it happens, and the email address is one you can never forget: English@hope.edu

    -- A Word from our Chair
    -- Post-Graduation Plans
    -- English Awards
    -- News about English
        Students and Alumni
   -- Memoirists
   -- Moby Dick-athon
   -- Notes from AWP
   -- Here and Now, by John Cox
   -- English Faculty News
   -- Summer Reading
   -- Ex Bibliotheca

*  Natalie Dykstra

*  Barbara Mezeske

Where are they going? What will they do?
English seniors ’07 shared some of their plans with us.
When you see these graduating majors, wish them well in their new lives away from Hope—

Christian Piers — After this incredible experience of Hope College has ended, I'm planning to pursue a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing, possibly followed by medical school. I can remember my first class with Jack Ridl like it was last Wednesday, and I'm already beginning to hear nostalgic campfire music. Thanks for everything, English Department.

Joanna Olson — I am currently working as an editorial assistant at Zondervan and in the fall I will be moving to London to complete my Masters in Publishing at City University, where I'll be working with the top in the industry. Thanks, Hope College, for preparing me for this!

Nathaniel DeYoung — I will be pursuing my PhD in clinical psychology. I am have not yet decided which school I will be attending.

After graduation, Caitelen Anderson is moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico. She will be married in June and in July has plans to travel to Guatemala for work in missions. She then anticipates taking a job as the communications director at a church, doing part-time PR work for a non-profit missions organization, or pursuing a job opportunity in advertising.

Tarah Fron — Upon graduating from Hope College I am hoping to do one of three options—an internship at Free the Slaves or some other organization in Washington DC, spending 14 months volunteering with the Institute for International Cooperation and Development, or going back to school in Seattle, WA to be certified as a paralegal. Whatever I choose I could not have been more prepared if it were not for the great professors at Hope!

Katie Wandell is accepted to the summer publishing institute at the University of Denver.

Megan Dougherty — I'm taking a year off to work, spend time with my family, and apply to graduate programs. In a year or so, I want to go get my MFA in poetry. I'm thinking about returning to the Oregon Extension as a helper/teaching assistant in the fall, but regardless of what happens, I'm looking forward to this next chapter of my life. It's totally cliché, but my time here has gone by so quickly, and I'm going to miss a lot of parts of Hope.

Sarah Mignin plans on moving herself to the windy city of Chicago where she will pursue a career in public relations/advertising. She will spend most of her time trying to figure her way around the city, drinking a mass amount of coffee and writing her life away. She's bummed about leaving Hope because the experience has been so amazing and wonderous, and she wouldn't have had it any other way! She wants to thank all of her great professors, Lubbers, the Dudgeon, the grande Nonchalant at Lemonjello's, and to Martha Miller for being open 24 hours a day and assisting her in procrastination problems. When asked to leave some parting words Sarah responded with the most cliché thing she could think of, "It's been good, Dutchman, now let's spread those wings and fly".

Laura Peterson — I'm heading home to Ohio for the summer, where I'll be looking for a job in publishing (hopefully back here in West Michigan) and thinking about grad school. We'll see how that goes! Hope has been great. My fellow English nerds and professors - thank you. I learned more than you know.

Kristin Olson — Most of the time I spent "writing" this little news blurb was actually spent NOT writing. Instead, I was doing one of the following: looking out the window, talking with a dear friend, and making chocolate no-bake cookies. And I realized that while I have no exciting newsflash about my future plans, I intend to do what the preceding reflection demonstrates. I will write, I will observe and enjoy the world around me (including the culinary side of things), and I want to do it with the people I love. Beyond that, I am excited to embrace the new adventures and challenges of the future. An MFA in creative writing? A return to the bella Italia? One thing I am sure of is that I owe a hearty thank you to the incredible members of the Hope College English Department. You have helped to open up the world inside and beyond me, and have given me vision and encouragement for the journey.

Nicole Brace — For the next year I will be apprenticing at different organic farms in the area: learning how the land works, getting to know folks, and working my brain and my hands in a new way! I aim to eventually pursue an MFA in creative writing, and I guess I hold to a bandy- legged hope that I and my writing can be a small part of service, renewal, and wonder in the places I go. The English professors who have cared about me here have given me the best gifts to leave with: cause for debt and gratitude. Thank you!

Elena Valle ’08 and Brad Haveman ’08 have their interview with Carlos Eire in the new issue of the Chronicle, the most important and most widely read journal for creative writers.

Lauren Jensen ’04 has been accepted to Emerson for the MFA program in poetry, and to the MFA program at UNC Wilmington.  She has also been offered a full tuition waiver and an assistantship at Virginia Tech for their MFA program.

Kristie Evans ’95 has also been accepted to the MFA program at Emerson, as well as at the University of Massachusetts.

Stephanie Zmyslo ’07 is working as a junior copywriter for Prism Marketing Communications, a small advertising agency in New Albany, Ohio.

Laura Donnelly ’01 is finishing her MFA at Purdue, and has been accepted to the creative writing Ph.D. program at Western Michigan. She has been granted both a Doctoral Associateship and tuition remission. Laura also co-edited the latest Sycamore Review. You can see a review of her work at http://equanimity.blogspot.com/2007/02/every-poem-in-this-journal-did.html

Karly Fogelsonger ’10 had two pieces she wrote in English 354 accepted for publication in Offbeat magazine at Michigan State University.

Meggie Elliott ’05 says “It has been a long five months waiting for the mail each day in such anticipation to put my stomach in knots. However, even though it has taken this long to find out about my future, I’m going to make this email as brief as possible. After applying to ten universities, I’ve been accepted to the University of Pittsburgh and will be attending classes there in the fall. While I am currently still on the waiting list for three other universities, I’ve made my decision and feel that all signs point to Pitt. It is a three year masters program and I am extremely excited! The first weekend in May I am planning a visit to campus to search for an apartment and to explore what will be my new surroundings.
         “ Thanks so much for your support. I love you all!!! Go Pitt!”
And a couple of days later she writes:  "I just received an email from University of Wyoming.  They have offered me a spot in their MFA program WITH a graduate assistantship!"

Susanne Coffey ’81 reports that as a class assignment she had to respond to a Call for Papers. Her professor encouraged her to actually submit hers to the conference she had chosen, and it was accepted. She presented her paper at the University Penn Graduate Humanities Forum Conference in February. She is Academic Counselor at the School of Visual Arts, University of North Texas.

Phil Waalkes ’04 has been accepted to Old Dominion, but has decided to attend Western Carolina University.

Glen Lester ’05 writes "For those of you who don't know, I've just let the University of North Carolina at Greensboro know that I'll be headed there in August to begin graduate work in the MFA fiction writing program. They've graciously offered me the Randall Jarrell fellowship, which, in addition to linking forever my name to that of of the great poets--and mega-hott professor, according to my family friend Beth Norris, who took a poetry class from Jarrell back in the day--will allow me to write undisturbed, except for a steady trickle of cash, for at least a year. This is great, great news. Thanks for all your help (you know who you are)." Glen was also accepted into the MFA program in fiction at University of Montana.

Rebecca (Re) Miller ’05 will be giving her graduate reading in April 18 at Chatham College, where she will receive her MFA at spring graduation.

Andrea Cleary Dec '04 has been accepted to the MFA program at George Mason, and to the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth, her first choice  We just received this email from her--
"Dear Ones,
     I am writing to share my excitement and future plans with you. This afternoon I was just able to finalize our (Craig and my) plans for August and the next three years. As many of you know, I applied recently to graduate school to pursue a MFA degree in Poetry. On Thursday I found out that I had been accepted to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond (my number one choice, by the way). Then, today, I got a call from the Director of the program who offered me a graduate teaching assistantship for the entirety of my program (3 years). For those of you who don't know what a big deal and honor this is, the school will be waiving my tution fees and will give me a stipend in which to cover living expenses while I am in school. This is monumental for me because I will get to teach undergraduate students while I am a graduate student and I don't have to worry about racking up more loans or working full time to cover my expenses while I also a student. So, as of August, Craig and I will be moving to Richmond, VA.
     I want to thank all of you for your support to me and the encouragement and knowledge I have gained for each one of you in a unique way.
     I hope this email isn't too disjointed or out of the blue, I am just floating around today and not expressing myself very clearly, but wanted to share my news with you."

Sara Lamer’s '05 collection, A City without Trees, from March Street Press, is now on the bookshelves.

Meridith deAvila Dec. '03 is writing freelance for a local magazine called Lynchburg Living, and getting lots of new photography gigs (shooting weddings on her own as well as assisting another photographer.  She's builidng a studio in her home so she can concentrate on this freelance way of life.  This month Meridith had her first exhibit of her photography since moving to Virginia, callled "Of Peace and Splendor". 

Alison Laurell Dec. '99 has comleted her MA in literature from Western Michigan University, and has been accepted into their MFA program.

Michael Theune '98 has just published Structure and Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns through Teachers and Writers Collaborative, with promo blurbs by Billy Collins ("A smart collection of takes on poetry's essential moves.") and Ed Hirsch ("...an ingenious way of thinking about poetry."). "T & W's new book offers a road map for analyzing poetry through examination of poems' structures, rather than their forms or genres....to see the fundamental affinities between strikingly different kinds of poetry and radically different eras."

Sally Smits '01 has been nominated by Smartish Pace as one of the "Best New Poets for 2006," published by Samovar and Meridian.

Dear family, friends, foes, and former romantic interests,

The 15 students of English 358: Creative Writing: Memoir, taught by the fearless Dr. Beth Trembley, would like to thank you for all the years of excellent material: thanks for picking your nose during church, swearing in your sleep, forcing us to swallow that mixture of chocolate milk and ketchup in the third grade, and breaking up with us that time we kissed your cousin (it was an accident, we swear).

These events—indeed, as well as countless others—have provided us with the inspiration to write thousands of pages about you. Ok—not just you, but you and us and the lessons we’ve learned from each other
.
We had so many stories to tell that after a semester of writing and revising, that we selected the most embarrassing stories and compiled them into one spectacular script (if we do say so ourselves), which will be performed with help from the Theater Department on the Dewitt Center main theater stage on April 24 at 8:00 pm. We call our mutant play, “Tales from College-Ruled Margins.”

We invite you to attend. Come and see what we really think about you. And please, don’t forget to enjoy the cookies and punch in the lobby afterward.

Thanks again!

Sincerely, Jeremy Benson for  The Memoirists

In this Issue:

-- A Word from our Chair
-- Post-Graduation Plans
-- English Awards
-- News about English
    Students and Alumni
-- Memoirists
-- Moby Dick-athon
-- Notes from AWP
-- Here and Now, by John Cox
-- English Faculty News
-- Summer Reading
-- Ex Bibliotheca

At 7 pm on a late March Friday night, fourteen students from American Literature I gathered all of the bean-bag cushions from the Martha Miller Center into one of the classrooms, plugged in the coffee pot, and started reading Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick aloud to each other. They read through the night, a new reader picking up a chapter as a classmate finished the previous one. Perhaps a few dozed from time to time, but always a voice kept the narrative moving ahead. When a sleeper woke up, she’d ask, “What’s happening?” And always the answer would be the same: “They’re still chasing the white whale.” Professors stopped by to bring snacks or meals and to read a chapter. A few friends dropped in to listen and read. Twenty hours later, a little after 4 on Saturday afternoon, they finished, and posed—a bit bedraggled, sleep-deprived, but with a smile on their faces—for a celebratory photograph.

English students aren't the only English-types who have been busy in the past couple of months.  The faculty have published chapbooks, non-fiction, memoirs, poems, articles, and columns. Two have earned their doctorates.  Others are reading their creative works at conferences and other venues.  Several are planning summer trips to teach and learn.  Who ever said that being a college prof was easy?

David James’s chapbook, Lost Enough, has been accepted for publication in 2007 by Finishing Line Press. He was also awarded Honorable Mention in the Diner poetry magazine contest for his poem “I Don’t Know the Biochemistry of a Hummingbird.” There were three winners and three honorable mentions out of “a zillion” submissions.

Priscilla Atkins (VanWylen Library), Jackie Bartley, David James, Jack Ridl, Heather Sellers, and Debra Wierenga will participate in a poetry reading at Till Midnight Gallery for William Shakespeare’s Birthday Party on April 23.

Nancy Nicodemus (Emerita) is scheduled to give her senior art history paper in April. The topic is “Modern Motherhood in the Art of Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Kathe Kollwitz.” Her works on display for the senior studio art show will include a “book” with photographs of sixteen art pieces she’s done along with her poetry they reference.

Curtis Gruenler will give a talk at the Fourth International Piers Plowman Conference at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, May 17-19, with the title, "Making Riddles out of Scripture: The Poetics of Enigma in Langland’s Commentary on First Corinthians 13." Curtis and student Katey Masterton received a collaborative research grant for this summer from CrossRoads for work related to his book project, The Poetics of Enigma: Riddles, Rhetoric, and Theology in Piers Plowman and Its Contemporaries.

Jackie Bartley's book Ordinary Time has just been released by Spire Press. The manuscript won the 2005 Spire Press Award for poetry and will soon be available in a bookstore near you! She will be spending the coming months sitting around watching the flowers grow while her left foot heals after surgery on the Ides of March. Et tu!

Bill Pannapacker’s 50th column as "Thomas H. Benton" appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in March. An archive of the columns can be found under “Publications” on his department Web page.

Heather Sellers reports that the first chapter of her new book, Face First, is forthcoming in Best Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind. A new essay is forthcoming in Arts and Letters and poems are forthcoming in Field, St. Ann's Review, and Confrontation. Heather is doing five readings for National Poetry Month. Summer plans: hoping to cycle in her first century ride and spend time (on the bike and off) with friends. “I'm working on my memoir, and a new collection of poetry.”

Susanna Childress Banner was accepted into the Nebraska Summer Writer's Workshop to work with Li-Young Lee, as well as to the Wesleyan Writers Conference. She also recently had a poem, "In the Middle of a Long Illness," selected by Marilyn Nelson for honorable mention for 2006 Dogwood Poetry Contest. Susanna successfully defended her dissertation in late March at Florida State University, completing her doctoral studies in English and Creative Writing. Congratulations, Dr. Childress!

And congratulations, Dr. Jeffrey! Karima Jeffrey earned her doctoral degree by defending her dissertation at Howard University in early April.

Jack Ridl will be teaching at The Far Field Writers Retreat, The Interlochen Writers Retreat, Ox Bow, and Hope College's August Seminars. He's been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. He really enjoyed the several readings he gave this spring, especially those with his friends and colleagues and the one he gave at Michigan State with former student Chris Dombrowski.

David Klooster and Patricia Bloem published “What Shall We Teach? Education for What Ends” in Thinking Classroom, an international journal of teacher education, simultaneously published in Russian as Peremena. In May, David will teach a senior seminar course in the Vienna Summer School, and in June he will participate in the festivities for the tenth anniversary of the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project in the Czech Republic, a program in which he has served as a volunteer faculty development workshop leader since 1997. Then he flies from Vienna to Shanghai, China, to present a series of invited lectures in American literature at the University of Shanghai.

Stephen Hemenway will direct the Vienna Summer School in May and June as it enters its second half century.

Kathleen Verduin has published A. James Prins: A Life in Literature. Kathleen co-edited the collection with Prins’ son, Christopher Prins. The volume collects papers by and about Professor Prins, long-time member of the Hope College English Department. The book is available in the Hope-Geneva Bookstore.