The Quill #7: AWE News #6

So many Applied Writing & English faculty came out with recent publications that we didn’t have the space to give them all a feature! Here are some of the works UWGB professors and lecturers have published in the past year or will be publishing in the fall:

Roshelle Amundson published her essay “Panhandling for Peace: Resilience in the Fight for Joy” in Spark: Celebrities and Our Decisive Moments, which came out this past October from Chimera Projects LLC. This anthology of personal essays examines celebrities and their impact on the wider world and our own personal one. Professor Amundson’s piece is a braided essay about “resilience and continuing to withstand not despite but because of. …”

Jacob Boyd published his poetry chapbook My National Parks (pictured left) in July 2024, which was awarded third place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook Award. He also published three more poems in the past year: “Strophic Cascade [The woods you know. The woods are owned.]” and “Strophic Cascade [Between the storm inside and the storm window,]” appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of 32 Poems. And “Shuffle for James Thomas” appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Cider Press Review.

Brian Harrell: You may know him from the online classes he teaches in Writing Foundations, but Brian Harrell has a secret double life teaching classes in science writing and research, and medical ethics and humanities for the Northeast Ohio Medical University. He co-authored an article titled “Pediatric Palliative Care Simulation Improves Resident Learning Outcomes: An 11-Year Review,” which was published in February in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. He also has another article, “Moving Against the Grain: Combining Writing Center Theory and In-House Editing Services to Create a Graduate Writing Center,” coming later this year in The Peer Review.

Zack Kruse is busy directing and co-producing a documentary film called DITKO, “about the life and work of Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and creator of Dr. Strange (among other notable comic book characters).” View the trailer and learn more about thie film at the DITKO film website. He is also working with the Ditko estate to revive some of Ditko’s creator-owned characters. Kruse has submitted the first comic in that effort, Steve Ditko’s Static: Architects of the Self, to major comics publisher Image.
Meanwhile, he has been carving out time to co-write an upcoming book, Beyond the Comics Pantheon: The Question, with Vincent Haddad for the Univerity Press of Mississippi. This book is a part of the Beyond the Comics series at UPM dealing with characters that are otherwise “underwritten about.” Kruse also has a book chapter coming out, “Recuperating and Packaging Diversity: The Problem of Whiteness in Doctor Strange (2016),” through RIT Press (title TBD). His upcoming RIT monograph, A Piece of the Action: Grass Green and the Midwest Underground, will focus on Green as one of the few Black comics artists to participate in the Underground Comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, his radio show, The Mutant Graveyard, airs every Wednesday from 3:00 – 4:00 PM on Rockin’ the Suburbs Radio.

Rebecca Meacham had two flash memoir pieces published in spring/summer 2024: “The Way We Love Each Other” was nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize by Ilanot Review, after appearing in the journal’s Spring-Summer 2024 issue, themed “Fixations: Obsessions and Repair.” And “Where Are You? Here I Am, Here,” which centered around the loss of her family’s beloved dog Scarlet, was published in Roanoke Review.

Chuck Rybak is seeing the results of an apparent storm of creativity. He has two poems—”No Word for It” and “Multiverse”—in the latest issue (Issue #4) of Skipjack Review, the theme of which is “Best of 2024.” In addition, his poem “Lethe” will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Expressive Writing. His creative nonfiction piece “Highway Arithmetic” is forthcoming in Hippocampus Magazine. And his poem “Van Gogh’s Nest” will be published later this year in Wild Roof Journal.

Tracy Fernandez Rysavy is in the academic phase of her writing/editing career. Her interview with Jessica Johns, the award-winning author of Bad Cree (2024), will appear in American Gothic Studies Journal later this year. She is currently guest co-editing an issue of Feminist Pedagogy Journal on teaching recovered literature by neglected women writers, in collaboration with Alice Martin, which will come out this fall. Last summer, she co-edited the peer-reviewed online teaching resource library for the Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, a partner organization of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, again with Martin.