MISCELLANY – APRIL 3, 2023
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Texas State University has recognized Cyrus Cassells as a 2023 University Distinguished Professor. This appointment honors individuals whose performance in teaching, research, and service has been exemplary and recognized at the state, national, and international levels. Cyrus will receive a $5,000 award, a commemorative medallion, and a plaque. Cyrus will retain the University Distinguished Professor title for the remainder of his time at Texas State. An interview with Cyrus appears in the latest issue of The Tupelo Quarterly.

John Blair has been named the 2023 recipient of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry by Philadelphia Stories. John will be honored at an awards ceremony in Philadelphia on May 6th.

Miriam Williams is the 2023 recipient of the Society for Technical Communication’s Ken Rainey Award for Distinguished Research. The citation reads, “For exemplary leadership in the field of technical communication, demonstrating excellence in research methods, application of public policy, key scholarship on issues of race and ethnicity, and promotion of research that not only ‘is good’ but also ‘does good’ throughout the field and society.” Miriam will receive the award at the organization’s 2023 STC Summit Honors Event in Atlanta, GA in May 2023, where the organization will celebrate its platinum anniversary.

Bianca Alyssa Pérez’s debut chapbook GEMINI GOSPEL from Host Publications is available. Bianca extends an invitation to the chapbook launch on April 8th at 7pm at the Host Publications office.

MARC student Rich Riddle presented “Freedom in Thai Boys’ Love: Queer Representations and Global Fandom” at the American Comparative Literature Association’s Conference in Chicago.

Work by Steve Wilson, as well as MFA poetry graduates C. Prudence Arceneaux and Colin Pope, appears in the new collection from Tolsun Books: The Book of Life After Death: Essays and Poems. Steve Wilson’s prose poem “The Company Man” appears in the new anthology, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose.

Elliott Brandsma (B.A. in English and Art, 2013) has received several notable scholarships in support of his doctoral studies in Scandinavian literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The U.S. Department of Education awarded him two Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for the upcoming year; he received a summer scholarship to study the Finnish language through the Finnish National Education Agency and an academic year fellowship to conduct dissertation research at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. He has also been invited to Jonsered, Sweden, for a June writer’s residency at Villa Martinson, the former home of Nobel Prize-winning Swedish poet, Harry Martinson.

Andrew Barton’s article “Creating Climate Conscious Players: Final Fantasy VII’s Ecoactivist Fan Communities” appears in Przegląd Kulturoznawczy in a special issue titled, “Playing While The World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis.”

MFA poetry student Melissa Huckabay’s poem “If You Wondered About the Astronaut Who Never Went to Space” was featured in the March 23 issue of SWWIM Every Day, an online literary journal.

Rob Tally presented seven invited talks or conference papers in March and April. He was a keynote speaker for the 25th Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group, University of Florida, in Gainesville; the theme of the conference was “Marxism and Cartography,” and Rob’s address was titled “Mapping the Ever Given: The World System in Crisis (as Usual).” He also gave an invited talk, “The Spatial Situation: Place, Orientation, and Mapping,” for the Prajna Foundation and Bharata Mata College, Kochi, Kerala, India (via Zoom). Rob presented “The Frame and the Map: Modernist Literary Spaces in the World System” at the American Comparative Literature Association convention in Chicago, and “The Ruin of Middle-earth: Sauron, the Second Age, and the Post-Apocalyptic Condition” at the 19th Annual University of Vermont Tolkien conference, in Burlington, VT [online]. Rob also presented three talks for the Tolkien Studies section of the Popular Culture Association’s annual conference in San Antonio: “No More Big Bosses: Orcs and the Utopian Impulse in Tolkien’s World System”; “‘Always the poor Uruks’: Orcs, Racism, and Violence”; and “Sauron: Weirdly Sexy.”

Percival Everett’s novel The Trees has won the 2022 L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize. Texas State will celebrate with a reading and book signing by Everett on Thursday, April 6th at 3:30pm at the Alkek Library’s Wittliff Collections. Join us on April 6th to welcome Percival Everett to the Texas State campus for this award and celebration.