Category Archives: Literary Events

You are Inspiring: Over 100 English Students present at Made in Millersville

Folks, this is a banner year for English at Made in Millersville.  We have over 96 separate events (poetry readings, panel sessions, poster sessions, etc.) that Millersville English students are engaged in.  What can I say–you all are rocking scholarship, creativity, and professionalism.

Check out Skyler Gibbon in the student spotlight analyzing Beyonce, Adele, and intersectional feminism!  Congratulate Daniel Dicker, Karen layman, Sara Lipski, and Shaakirah Tate on their publication of the Made in Millersville Journal next week. If you are thinking about studying abroad, go hear about the amazing journeys of Abigail Breckbill, Thomas Joyce, and Jason Leighty.  Or take in Poetry Out Loud with Dr. Corkery and his creative crew.  And check out all of the impressive posters and panels.  It will be a super busy day.

While the English faculty is always super proud of our students, we take it to the next level when we see all of your accomplishments together on one day.  It’s just so fabulous!  We hope you will come out and support each other and let your curiosity roam free!

You can find all the English events listed here: MiM English Events 2019

We’ll have a film crew on site that day to capture some of your accomplishments.  We’re making a video for the website.  Eric Griffin, an MU Art alum who took film classes, is doing the video, so if you see him and his crew, give them a little of you for the video.  He won’t be able to capture everything, but I’ve encouraged him to try to get as much as possible so we can represent our community well.

Thanks for all the positive energy, great scholarship, and creative ideas that you all put out into the world.  You are inspiring.

2019 Northeast Modern Language Association Conference

Millersville Professors and graduate students traveled to Washington D.C. for the annual Northeast Modern Language Association Conference. Maria Rovito, in collaboration with the other Millersville students and professors, wrote a summary of the event and presentation topics.

Andie Petrillo, Dr. Emily Baldys, and Maria Rovito

The 50th anniversary conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association was held at the National Harbor in Washington, D.C., at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, from Thursday, March 21, 2019, to Sunday, March 24, 2019. The theme of the conference focused on transnational humanities, particularly intersections of nations and identity within language and literature. A variety of panels, roundtables, and workshops were held that focused on various kinds of aspects of English studies, particularly literature, rhetoric and composition, creative writing and publishing, critical theory, interdisciplinary humanities, and pedagogy and teaching. Several keynote speakers were included in this year’s conference; most notably featured was the postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha, who spoke about the politics of migration and human rights in his keynote address.

Members and presenters came from all over the world, including a few of our own students and faculty here at Millersville University. Graduate students and English faculty presented their research at the convention, including Drs. Emily Baldys and Katarzyna Jakubiak, as well as graduate students Maria Rovito and Andie Petrillo. Each of their presentations focused on different aspects of literary studies.

Dr. Emily Baldy’s presentation was titled “The Sisterhood of Disability Care in Gaskell’s Industrial Narratives,” and focused on disability care as surrogate sisterhood in Gaskell’s first published short story, “The Three Eras of Libbie Marsh.” In her work, Dr. Baldys argued that “Gaskell’s narratives self-consciously resist industrial capitalism’s devaluation of difference and dependence.” Particularly, through Gaskell’s depictions of sisterly relations and disability care, “Gaskell’s texts mount a ‘dependency critique’ similar to that proposed by modern disability theorists, modeling a respect for difference that Gaskell saw as necessary for rehabilitation of industrial system.”

Dr. Katarzyna Jakubiak presented on the politics of translation in her presentation, particularly translating African American Literature in Poland during the Cold War. Titled “We Make Our Own Negroes: James Baldwin’s Reception in Poland During the Cold War and Now,” Dr. Jakubiak’s work focused on the role of James Baldwin’s work in Poland in the 1960-70s in relation to current Polish reactions to Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro.  She argued that the “past and present Polish responses to Baldwin attest to the power of his voice to impact the discourse of interracial and interethnic relations globally.” Dr. Jakubiak’s presentation also focused on the impact of Baldwin’s work on Polish political discourse: “As Poland’s current populist government manipulates the public fear of ethnic or racial ‘other’ to garner support, Baldwin’s work has again provided a platform for intellectuals and cultural activists aiming to undermine the government’s xenophobic discourse.”

Maria Rovito presented twice during the conference, in a roundtable on African American literature and trauma studies as well as on a panel on ability and identity. Her first presentation, titled “Race and Disability in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Wilson’s Fences,” focused on the intersections of race and disability within African American literature. Particularly, her presentation researched how race, disability, and trauma impacts disabled characters within The Bluest Eye and Fences. Her second presentation, “‘I Did This to Myself’: Disability and Non-Normative Bodies in the Manga and Anime Series One Piece,” researched representations of disabled bodies within manga and animé. Her research particularly focused on Eiichiro Oda’s series One Piece, and how disabled characters within the series disrupt Western notions and expectations of disabled bodies.

Andie Petrillo presented a poster titled, “Packing a Punch: Satirizing the ‘New Woman’ In Victorian England.” She researched visual representations of the New Woman of Victorian England, and how these images stereotyped early feminists within the later Victorian period. These representations “show a shifting attitude towards a woman’s place in the later Victorian era and are figureheads for first-wave feminism.”

This year’s conference showcased the research and skill of Millersville students and faculty, and presented an opportunity for students and faculty to learn new ideas about literature, provided networking and mentoring opportunities, and gave students and faculty an opportunity to have fun with English studies. Next year’s conference will be held in Boston, MA.

-Maria Rovito

George Street Press Open Submissions!

George Street Press  is Millersville University’s literary magazine, open to students and faculty alike.  Submissions are open for the Spring 2019 Edition!

This year, the club will be accepting submissions until March 8th. One student/faculty/alumni university member may submit:

  • 3 poems (one poem cannot exceed two pages)
  • 2 pieces of prose (one piece should not exceed 4,000 words)
  • 2 pieces of non-fiction (one piece should not exceed 4,000 words)
  • 3 pieces of flash-fiction (each 500 words or less)
  • 5 pieces of original art (submit in .jpg format)
  • 1 experimental piece (found poems, screen-plays, the strange, genre-bending, and unknown)

To submit, please email GeorgeStreetPressSubmissions@gmail.com with your name, contact info (phone number/email), as well as any notes about your pieces for the editors. All documents must be in .docx or .doc format, and art pieces must be in .jpg format. Once a piece is printed into the magazine, the writer is officially a printed author! This is a perfect opportunity for English Majors to get ahead in the creative world.

About a week before the end of the semester, the George Street Press will host a release party for the Spring 2019 Edition! Stay tuned for more information. Here are some photos from last year’s event:

Contact Kitsey Shehan or Sara Pizzo for more information about club meetings/submission guidelines or visit their Get Involved page. Photo Credit: GSP

Literary Festival

The Literary Festival in November 2nd was a great success! If you didn’t have a chance to attend, the theme was “The Writing Life” and there were myriad presentations spanning fiction, poetry, nonfiction, publishing, and everything in between. The guest writers and presenters showcased writing as a means of self-exploration and engagement with the world around us.

The winner of the Flash Fiction Contest was Nichole DiGirolamo, a sophomore Psychology major with a minor in Art — congratulations!

Nichole DiGirolamo

Nichole’s piece, “My Mother’s Closet,” is about childhood memories, specifically memories about the items and colors inside her mother’s closet. Nichole explains, “How I miss being a child and seeing the colors and fabrics and not having a care in the world about anything going on. I wrote the piece because of all of the wonderful memories I had in that closet trying on my mothers shoes that are always way too big. Wearing her jackets that fell to the floor and always seeing the artwork she has kept from all those years. She reacts and treats each one like a million dollar piece of art even though it was terrible.”

An excerpt from her story:

A drawing made by a girl of a house on the hill. It was made with oil pastels, greens, blues, yellows fill the page. The house small but full of windows and doors so there’s a never ending amount of light to enter the home. A bush outside the shape of a cat with a tail longer than a mile it had what looked to be roses growing on it. There’s a walk way with bright pineapple colored stepping stones and in between each stone was smaller lemon colored stones. The sides of the house rough made out of bricks and cement. In the front yard a family, I tall tan man with a mustache the size of the titanic, eyes greener than limes and scribbles on his arms to mimic tattoos. A woman short with blonde hair above her ears with beautiful greenish blue eyes and a girl with long brown hair and straight across bangs giant eyes like pools of chocolate.

This is Nichole’s favorite part of the piece because of the sentimental value: “The picture is me and my family and all the colors and the details used to describe the picture was exactly how it Is described. I drew the photo when I was about 6-7 and remember every moment of making it.” To write the piece of fiction, Nichole describes that she “sat in my mom’s closet and just took a look around at the height level I would be when I was younger. I closed my eyes and touched things and smelled things to get a better sense of my surroundings and to give better detail. I looked at things that had the most meaning, like the shoes and the money. The money showed the trips we took as a family and showed how many memories we had on those trips.”

Here are some photos from the festival on November 2nd:

Panel Discussion – “The Writing Life” From left to right: Barb Strasko, Mitchell Sommers, Matt Kabik, Alex Brubaker, Phil Benoit
Poet Michele Santamaria
Event Organizers: Jeff Boyer and William Archibald

Poet Le Hinton (on left) with Matt Kabik

Former Lancaster Poet Laureate Barb Strasko
Books for sale at the event

Thanks to:

  • Festival Chair William Archibald and Assistant Chair Jeff Boyer for their work organizing the event
  • Curtis Smith, Le Hinton, Jenny Hill, Michele Santamaria, Mitchell Sommers, Barb Strasko, Alex Brubaker, Megan Phillips, Phillip Benoit, Jamie Beth Cohen, Jen Hirt, Laura English, Timothy Mayers, Katarzyna Jakubiak, and Michael Deibert for agreeing to present
  • Graduate Assistant Andie Petrillo for creating the WordPress site and assisting with general planning
  • Rachel Hicks for creating advertising

Literary Festival – Publishing

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here

From 2-2:55pm in the McNairy Library, there will be a panel focused on publishing presented by Meghan Phillips and Jamie Beth Cohen. Here is some more information about the presenters:

Meghan Phillips is a writer and editor from Lancaster, PA. Her stories and poems have been nominated for the the Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, Best Microfiction anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. She is the fiction editor for the Lancaster-based literary magazine Third Point Press, and an associate editor for SmokeLong Quarterly, one of the oldest literary magazines dedicated to flash fiction. Her chapbook of flash fiction, Abstinence Only, is forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books. To find out more about her writing, visit meghan-phillips.com.

Jamie Beth Cohen writes about difficult things, but her friends think she’s funny. Her writing has appeared in TeenVogue.com, The Washington Post/On Parenting, Salon, and several other outlets. Her debut novel, WASTED PRETTY, will be published in April 2019. It’s a YA book about what happens when a sixteen-year-old girl who usually blends in, starts to stand out. Jamie’s favorite job was scooping ice cream when she was 16 years old. She thinks everything about 16 was wonderful and amazing, except all the stuff that was horrible. Find her tweeting @Jamie_Beth_S

Be sure to check out one or more of the panels tomorrow!

Literary Festival – Panel Discussion: “The Writing Life”

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here

From 12:05am to 1:55, the literary fest will shift into room 112 for a panel discussion composed of recent Millersville alums about “The Writing Life.” Here is some more information about the panel members:

Phil Benoit, a retired MU professor, has narrated 23 audio-books, which are listed for sale on Audible. A former college faculty member and administrator, he is the co-author of several college textbooks on communications and broadcasting.

Mitchell Sommers is the fiction editor of Philadelphia Stories, a quarterly literary magazine. He is an attorney practicing in Lancaster and Ephrata.

Barb Strasko, who appeared earlier in the day for the poetry panel, is the author of two collections of poetry and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Lancaster County by the Lancaster Literary Guild. She is a counselor, reading specialist, and literacy coach. and is currently the Poet in the Schools for Poetry Paths in the city of Lancaster.

Alex Brubaker is the Manager of the Midtown Scholar Bookstore and Director of the Harrisburg Book Festival. Previously, he was the Exhibit Coordinator of the Twin Cities Book Festival and the Editorial Assistant at Rain Taxi Magazine in Minneapolis.

During this section Dr. Corkery and his theatrical troupe will make an appearance.

Be sure to check out this panel and more on November 2nd!

 

Literary Festival – Poetry

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here

Sessions 2 and 3 of Millersville’s Literary Festival will focus on poetry. Session 2, which starts at 10am, will feature Le Hinton and Jenny Hill. Session 3, which begins at 11am, will feature Barb Strasko and Michele Santamaria. Here is some extra information about the guest poets for these sections:

Le Hinton is the author of six poetry collections and his work has been widely published and nominated for various awards such as the 2016 Pushcart Prize, the 2016 Best of the Net, and inclusion in Best American Poetry 2014. His current collection, Sing Silence (formerly A Chorus for Cotton), was a finalist for “The Best Prize for People of Color” from Big Lucks and an honorable mention for the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize.

Jenny Hill is the author of six books of poetry, two of prose, and is a teaching artist in the Arts-in-Education program with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has been teaching creative writing for the past 18 years and her work has been anthologized in high school textbooks and appeared in numerous literary journals.

Barb Strasko is the author of two collections of poetry: Graffiti in Braille and On the Edge of Delicate Day. She was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Lancaster County by the Lancaster Literary Guild. Her poem “Bricks and Mortar” is engraved in granite in Lancaster’s main square.

Michele Santamaria works as a Learning Design Librarian at MU. She was a reader for the South Carolina Review and inaugural poetry editor for the journal Cherry Tree. Her poems have most recently appeared in BayouBellingham Review, and Portland Review. In her current manuscript, Michele is writing about Technicolor movies, family history, beauty, and race.

Literary Festival – Flash Fiction Contest

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here

The Millersville University Literary Festival is sponsoring a Flash Fiction contest!

Submission Criteria:

  • Millersville students only
  • 1,000 word limit
  • Submit here (click on the “Submit Here” link) by October 15th at 11:59pm

The night before the festival (November 1st), the student fiction prize will be awarded at an open mic event in Saxby’s from 7-9pm. The winner will win a $100 prize and a spot in the George Street Press literary magazine.

Please submit your stories and come out to the open mic on November 1st!

Literary Festival – Fiction and Flash Fiction Presentation

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here

Session 1 of the Literary Festival will focus on Fiction and Flash Fiction.  Presenters Curtis Smith and Don Helin will discuss writing fiction from 9-9:50am. Here is some more information about the presenters:

Curtis Smith has been featured in over seventy literary journals and is the author of five books of fiction. His work has been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing and the recently released WW Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction. His most recent book is Lovepain, a novel from Braddock Avenue Books.

 

 

 

Don Helin is the author of five thrillers that draw from his military experience serving in a number of stateside posts as well as overseas in Vietnam and Germany. His novel, Secret Assault, was selected as the best Suspense/Thriller at the 2015 Indie Book Awards. Don is a member of International Thriller Writers, Military Writers Society of America, Penwriters, a state-wide writers group in PA.

 

 

 

 

Banned Book Week

This week, September 24th – 28th, the McNairy Library is celebrating Banned Book Week, an annual celebration of the Freedom to Read. All week banned books will be on display by the first floor circulation desk and there will be rotating banned book facts and statistics on the library monitors.

Here is the week’s schedule:

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday: 10-2pm Button Making – Make your own buttons to support the freedom to read (Lobby). Photo booth – Take a selfie and enter to win a gift card.

Tuesday: 12:05-1:10pm Panel Discussion – Join us for a faculty panel discussion on banned books and censorship (Room 104).

For more information about the event at the McNairy Library, contact Dr. Stephanie Pennucci.

Check out the Banned Books Week website to get involved with the national event.