Friesner Recognized as "Significant Educator"

Scott Friesner was recently recognized as a "Significant Educator" by Kalamazoo County's Excellence in Education program in connection with his teaching for the Academically Talented Youth Program (ATYP); this is the ninth year he has received the award.
He also joined Mike Johnston and Mike Gilmore of Northwoods Improvisers in composing and creating the music for "According to Twain: Accounts, Tales, and Yarns," a play commissioned by Central Michigan University and written by Jill Taft-Kaufman that is slated to be heard on NPR's "American Masters" series.

Scholarly Speaker this week, Dr. Carla Mulford

Dr. Carla Mulford, Associate Professor of English at Penn State University, will speak on "Benjamin Franklin and Educational Liberalism" on Thursday, March 13, at 7 p.m. as part of the English Department's Scholarly Speakers Series. The talk will be in the Lee Honors College. There will be a Q & A session and small reception afterward. Also on Thursday, she will participate in a brown bag lunch discussion in the Faculty Dining Room at the Bernhard Center at 12:15 p.m. The topic will be "Gender and the Early American Canon." Please join us for either or both events.

Janet Heller's news

Janet Heller speaks March 16th at the Michigan Reading Association Convention in Detroit on the topic "Using Stories and Nonfiction for Kids to Combat Bullying." She will also autograph her book How the Moon Regained Her Shape and participate in a breakfast for authors and teachers. Then, on March 19th at 5:15 pm., she reads, answers questions, and autographs her book at the YMCA in Portage, Michigan, at 2900 W. Centre. For more information, phone 269-324-9622.
On March 21 at 9 a.m. she gives another reading from her book at Comstock North Elementary School at 3100 N. 26th St. in Comstock, Michigan.
She speaks on a panel called "Beyond Tolerance and into Respect with Children's Choices" at the International Reading Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 7 at 9 a.m.

Here are some recent publications by Janet Heller:

"Franchising the Disenfranchised: Improving the Lot of Visiting Faculty and Adjuncts, Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers and the Global Academic Proletariat," ed. Rudolphus Teeuwen and Steffen Hantke (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007): 79-85.

"Returning to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin" (creative nonfiction), Midwestern Miscellany 35 (Spring/Fall 2007): 55-59.

Roy Seeger's chapbook now out

We are pleased to announce that Roy Seeger of Kalamazoo, Michigan, is the winner of the Gribble Press poetry chapbook contest of 2007 for his manuscript, Garden of Improbable Birds. Roy Seeger teaches English part time at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo Valley Community College. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and has appeared in such journals as Verse, The Laurel Review, Gulf Coast, The Mississippi Review as well as others. He lives in Kalamazoo with his wife and small dog.
To order a copy, send a check for $10.00 to Gribble Press, PO Box 10307, Spokane, WA 99209-0307. (http://www.greymaredit.com/2715/2736.html)
In addition, he's this month's broadside at http://www.broadsided.org/.

Frostic Reading: 3/17

The Gwen Frostic Reading Series is pleased to present visiting fiction writer Kellie Wells Monday, March 17 at 8pm at the Little Theatre.

Wells is the author of a collection of short fiction, Compression Scars, 2001 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award; and a novel, Skin, published by the University of Nebraska Press in the Flyover Fiction Series edited by Ron Hansen. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, The Gettysburg Review, and Prairie Schooner. In 2002 she received a Rona Jaffe Prize and Compression Scars was awarded the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writer’s Award in fiction.

As always, all are invited, so please encourage your students to attend and help us spread the word.