Angela Vietto

I had several nice pieces of news on the research front this summer. Ashgate offered me an advance contract on my book-in-progress, Women and Authorship in Revolutionary America. Many of you in the department have discussed that ongoing work with me in a variety of venues; thanks to you all. I'll also be presenting parts of that study during the coming year, in December as part of the MLA Division on American Lit to 1800 panel, and in June at a conference on the History of the Book in American Culture at the American Antiquarian Society. I've not had an opportunity to work at AAS before, so I'm eagerly anticipating nosing around in those dusty non-electronic archives.

John Kilgore

The photos show two of the high points of my exciting summer: 1) Summiting on Mount Snowdon, Wales, UK, with Liz Toynton, Bri Kennedy, and 20 other EIU students (not shown), about 4:00 PM on Saturday, June 17, in a twenty-knot gale, all of us half frozen and exhausted and ready for fish and chips. There in the background are England, Wales, and the Irish Sea, completely obscured by clouds; but it cleared up soon afterwards and the view was splendid as we descended (cha-cha-cha). Our assault commemorated Wordsworth's 1793 climb with Robert Jones. It was too cold and windy to read the passages of the Prelude we had brought along, but we were all mightily impressed with Wordsworth's mountaineering abilities, as the route he took with Jones was much harder than ours. 2) Norah Kilgore Hadley, born 5:28 August 17, eight pounds eight ounces, hale and healthy, about two hours before this photo was taken. Feisty when crossed, she otherwise shares the tranquil disposition of her older brother Ethan, as well as an uncanny facial resemblance to him at the same micro-age. All the nice things you've heard about grandparenting are true.

Ruth Hoberman

In June, Richard and I went to London, where I delivered a paper on Woolf,
Lawrence, and sexuality at the International Virginia Woolf Society Conference, and he researched Florence Henniker at the British Library. We also managed to see a few plays, visit with some friends, and eat some great meals. On our return, I proofread page proofs and index of the book I've been co-editing with Kate Benzel, on Woolf's short fiction, due out this fall from Palgrave/Macmillan, worked on an article, and reviewed a catalog of Leonard and Virginia Woolf's library for Pacific Northwest Quarterly. Best of all, we got to spend lots of time with our daughter Madeline, home from her freshman year at Kenyon College.

John Guzlowski

I got a lot of good news this summer. Harold Bloom is publishing one of my old essays on Postmodernism in a collection of essays on William Gaddis. The essay—written in 1975 when Postmodernism was still news—is called "No More Sea Changes" and looks at the loss of the deep self in Postmodern novelists like Gaddis, Barth, and Pynchon. I also had a bunch of poems accepted. Poetry East took "Why My Mother Stayed with My Father"; Margie: An American Journal of Poetry took a long poem sequence about when my Dad first came here after the war called "Looking for Work in America"; Crab Orchard Review took my "Poland" poem; and Atlanta Review is reprinting "Sometimes I Wish I Had a Theory of Poetry" in its 10th anniversary "Best of" issue. And finally, some of my poems about my parents were translated and published in a Hungarian arts/literature journal and a Polish one too.

Swimmers at Lake Shelbyville, Illinois, not far from the EIU campus, take advantage of the hot July weather.

Alumni News

Jason Lee Brown         
BA, Class of 2000

Since my last appearance in Agora’s May ’03 Alumni Issue, I have published work in Limestone, Erotic Tales, Main Street Rag, and Spire, and I have work forthcoming in The Spoon River Poetry Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Gulf Stream Magazine, Margie, Big Muddy, Eureka Literary Magazine, Maelstrom, and Vermillion Literary Project. (All print publications; but click to see online home pages.) Still enjoying my job as an editor for the News Progress in Sullivan, Illinois, I am applying to MFA programs in creative writing for Fall 2005.

 

top