Penn State English Professor Shara McCallum, best known for her poetry, has has also written personal essays and essays on poets and poetics for the past twenty years. Her forthcoming collection of personal essays in progress–Through a Glass, Darkly–explores race, migration, memory, and loss.

The collection’s titular essay appeared in the Autumn 2020 edition The Southern Review and received the journal’s Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Nonfiction, awarded to an “exceptional essay published in the previous calendar year.”

You can read “Through a Glass, Darkly” in The Southern Review, Autumn 2020. A conversation about the essay was featured in A Writer’s Insight.

To read more about Shara McCallum and her work, visit her author website. 

Don’t miss out on several upcoming opportunities that offer undergraduate writers valuable recognition and prize money!

Penn State English Department’s Undergraduate Writing Contests: Submit your fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to the department’s contests by January 25th for the chance to win awards and prize money. You can submit and find more details on the English department’s website.

Kalliope 2021: Submit your fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography for the chance to be published in this year’s edition of Kalliope, Penn State’s Undergraduate Literary Magazine by January 31st, midnight. Details on how to email your submissions can be found on Kalliope‘ website.

Toby Thompson, Penn State Associate Professor of English, will offer a reading as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will be held virtually via Zoom at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 28, 2021 (link provided below).

Toby Thompson is the author of six books of nonfiction, including: Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan’s Minnesota; Saloon; The ’60s Report; Riding the Rough String: Reflections on the American West; and Metroliner – Passages: Washington to New York. Throughout his long career, Thompson has written for publications as diverse as Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Gray’s Sporting Journal, GQ, Men’s Journal, Sports Afield, Playboy, Outside, Big Sky Journal, Western Art & Architecture, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

His most recent book, Fired On: Targeting Western American Art, published in March 2020 by Bangtail Press, joins Riding the Rough String and Metroliner to complete a trilogy of collected pieces of reportorial nonfiction, personal essays, and profiles. The book, which takes its name from the 1907 oil painting by Frederic Remington, explores three centuries of art in Western America and paints a larger portrait of the West and its inhabitants.

Thompson describes the collection as “eclectic … comprised of brief lives and random asides, saloon tributes and artist profiles, book and music notices. The earliest was written in 1983, the latest in 2019.” Author Carl Hiaasen calls it a “…first-rate collection, impressively diverse and vastly enjoyable. Toby Thompson is blessed with that rare journalistic talent for painting epic pictures with small, unforgettable details.”

Thompson has taught nonfiction writing at Penn State for over 30 years. He divides his time between State College and his homes in Livingston, Montana, and Cabin John, Maryland.

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English that receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment, the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing, and University Libraries.

ZOOM Link for Thompson’s January 28 Reading at 7:30 pm:
https://psu.zoom.us/j/97769385641?pwd=WGRHbVRMVGRtMEdrL3lZbHJuellhZz09

Penn State Library’s Short Edition has a short fiction/poetry writing contest coming up called “The Witching Hour”.

Anyone in the Penn State Community can submit their scary stories/poetry.

It runs from Oct. 5 -Oct. 30. If accepted by the Editorial Board, their story will be published on the Penn State Short Edition website.

In addition, five student winners will also get their stories published in Penn State’s short story dispensers as well as a $100 cash prize.

Honorable mentions (this can be anyone from the Penn State community) will be published in the dispensers, too.

Attached is the poster;  the link to the website leads to more information (and it’s where you submit):

https://psu.short-edition.com/writing-contest

Our BA/MA cohort for the 2020-21 academic year includes 10 fifth-year MA students and 9 incoming students in their fourth year. Read all about them on our updated BA/MA student bio page.

by Anushka Shah

It’s hard to stop staring at a man wearing two clunky, silver watches on each arm. But even more captivating are the stream of words coming out of Terrance Hayes’ mouth.  Hayes is casual and disassociative, but always thoughtfully personal in his presence and his poetic voice. It was simply dazzling to have him read his work for this year’s Emily Dickinson Lecture and participate in a Q&A. Here are some highlights, pieces of advice for writing, analogies on theory, and everything in between:

1. On his significant use of poetic forms: It’s fun to push against form. Imagine doing a break dancing routine vs. you doing that same dance routine in a strait jacket. Obviously, the dance routine in the strait jacket is better.
2. On poetry and any art forms: The point is to be expressive. Don’t think about it much when you’re creating. Make it casual.
3. On creating: When there’s less capacity for judgment, you can do more.
4. On his two watches: I’m obsessed with time.
5. On poetry vs. other mediums: Poetry absorbs everything. It’s the receptacle for other mediums.
6. On writing poems:  When writing a poem, you actively give it attention, but once that’s done, you let it survive on its own. Then you raise another poem. Poems are like kids.
7. On revision: I have to change for my work to change.
8. On his work: Obsessive record keeping
9. On form again: Form is like changing outfits for snatches of sound.
10. On reading: I’m always skimming, but close reading the things I like. Pay attention to what makes you stop.