{"id":1757,"date":"2019-03-11T10:45:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2019-03-12T09:13:35","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T13:13:35","slug":"monday-missive-march-11-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2019\/03\/11\/monday-missive-march-11-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – March 11, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Writing about Place<\/b>\u00a0— As a fiction writer, Bryn Chancellor stresses the importance of place in many of her stories.<\/i>\u00a0 The title of her debut novel,\u00a0Sycamore,\u00a0<\/i>underscores this point.\u00a0 The title is the name of the small town in Arizona where the novel takes place.\u00a0 For Bryn, settings involve the natural world, the built environment, and the history of a place.\u00a0 For Bryn, settings can be deceptive.\u00a0 The places she describes have their secrets, and in the case of\u00a0Sycamore<\/i>, one of the secrets involves a mysterious death.<\/p>\n

In some ways,\u00a0Sycamore\u00a0<\/i>reminds me of Sherwood Anderson’s\u00a0Winesburg, Ohio.<\/i>\u00a0 Both are set in small towns where things are not always as they seem.\u00a0 The residents of Sycamore and the residents of Winesburg have complex responses toward their towns, vacillating between feeling a sense of belonging and feeling a sense of isolation.<\/p>\n

Bryn will talk about\u00a0Sycamore\u00a0<\/i>and the secrets of this small Arizona town during her presentation for the Personally Speaking series on Tuesday, March 26, at UNC Charlotte Center City.\u00a0 For more information and to RSVP, please click on the following link:\u00a0https:\/\/clas.uncc.edu\/community\/personally-speaking\/sycamore-novel<\/a><\/p>\n

Bryn is not the only member of our English Department who is interested in the relationship between place and writing.\u00a0 Nearly every summer, Greg Wickliff teaches a course titled “Writing about Place.”\u00a0 I recently contacted Greg and asked him for more information about this course.\u00a0 Here is his response:\u00a0 “In my summer ‘Writing about Place’ course, students explore (at a distance) an experience of place through language and to a lesser extent, through photography. A sense of place, enduring or transient, can be deeply meaningful to us, whether we feel we inhabit it as a native, as a willing visitor, or even as a captive. Writing about place is the subject of diarists and travelers, of anthropologists and historians, of the young and the old. As writers of non-fiction, students in this course reflect upon their impressions of specific places\u00a0 \u2013 researching their histories and imagining their futures \u2013 preserved, threatened, stagnant, or revitalized. Because this summer course is an online-only one, we also seek to understand how places that are or once were physical and real, become through our writing, virtual constructions of words and images.”<\/p>\n

Bryn and Greg have different academic specialties.\u00a0 Bryn teaches fiction writing while Greg teaches professional and technical writing.\u00a0 However, for both Bryn and Greg, the act of writing about places is not just an exercise in description.\u00a0 They are both interested in how writing about places can evoke memories, stir up emotions, and communicate the personal meanings that we often gain from interacting with physical places.\u00a0 In a sense, Bryn and Greg are standing on common ground, and that common ground is called the English Department.<\/p>\n

Kudos<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 As you know, I like to use my\u00a0Monday<\/span>\u00a0Missives<\/span>\u00a0to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n

Bryn Chancellor<\/b>\u00a0last week served as a speaker and literary table host for Poets & Writers’s gala benefit \u201cIn Celebration of Writers\u201d in New York City.<\/p>\n

Juan Meneses<\/b>\u00a0recently presented a paper titled “The Limits of Citizenship:\u00a0 A Foreign Counter” at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference, which took place at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n

Lara Vetter<\/b>\u00a0recently published an article titled “The Violence of Translingual Identity in Kazim Ali\u2019s\u00a0Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities<\/i>\u00a0and Julia Alvarez\u2019s\u00a0The Other Side \/ El otro lado<\/i>” in\u00a0MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.\u00a0<\/i>44.1 (2019): 110-131.<\/p>\n

Upcoming Events and Meetings<\/b>\u00a0— Here is a list of upcoming events and deadlines:<\/p>\n

March 12<\/strong> — Sam Shapiro is presenting a 90-minute program on the “art of adapting books into film.”\u00a0 He is focusing primarily on Katherine Anne Porter’s novella\u00a0Noon WIne<\/i>.\u00a0 Here is the link to Charlotte Lit’s website, with further information:\u00a0https:\/\/www.charlottelit.org\/event\/shapeshifting-adapting-the-novella-for-screen\/?mc_cid=a38f543029&mc_eid=69ee4ca45f<\/a><\/p>\n

March 21<\/strong> — The Children’s Literature Graduate Organization (CLGO) will hold their annual Graduate Student Colloquium on March 21 in Cone 111 from 9:30 to 2:30. The title for this year’s colloquium is “Modern Authors, Historic Influences:\u00a0 Framing Children’s Literature in Historical Context.”<\/p>\n

March 23<\/strong> — Grace C. Ocasio will lead a poetry workshop, read from her two previous books, and read from her now under-contract collection (Family Reunion<\/i>\/Broadstone Books) at Press 53’s The High Road Festival on Saturday, March 23, in Winston Salem.<\/p>\n

March 26<\/strong> — The Personally Speaking presentation featuring Bryn Chancellor will take place on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at UNC Charlotte Center City.\u00a0 Bryn’s presentation on her book\u00a0Sycamore<\/i>\u00a0will begin at 6:30 p.m.\u00a0 A book signing and reception will follow her presentation. For more information and to RSVP, please click on the following link:\u00a0https:\/\/clas.uncc.edu\/community\/personally-speaking\/sycamore-novel<\/a><\/p>\n

March 30 — The Center City Literary Festival<\/strong> will take place on Saturday, March 30, at UNC Charlotte Center City. The children’s part of the festival will run from 10:00am to 1:00pm, and the adult part will run from 6:00pm-9:00pm.\u00a0 For more information, please click on the following link:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/centercitylitfest.uncc.edu\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 Bryn Chancellor’s familiarity with Arizona stems from the fact that she lived in the state for much of her youth.\u00a0 She earned her B.A degree from Northern Arizona University and her M.A. degree in English from Arizona State University before earning her M.F.A. from Vanderbilt University.\u00a0 Like Bryn, another person associated with our English Department has significant connections to the English Department at Arizona State University.\u00a0\u00a0 Who is this other person?<\/p>\n

Last week’s answer: Lincoln College, Oxford University<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) received many honorary doctoral degrees, but he never completed the PhD in English that he started after graduating from Dartmouth College.\u00a0 What is the name of the university where Dr. Seuss pursued his graduate studies?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing about Place\u00a0— As a fiction writer, Bryn Chancellor stresses the importance of place in many of her stories.\u00a0 The title of her debut novel,\u00a0Sycamore,\u00a0underscores this point.\u00a0 The title is the name of the small town in Arizona where the novel takes place.\u00a0 For Bryn, settings involve the natural world, the built environment, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-missive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}