Welcome
LSU English is home to world-renowned faculty, innovative course offerings, and talented students. At the heart of our work is an attention to verbal communication in spoken and written form – what humans do with language, how we do it, why we do it, and to what effects. Through the study of literature, linguistics, rhetoric, film, theory, and the craft of writing in a variety of genres and forms, we challenge students to ask questions of texts, to read beyond literal meanings, to understand how context and text interact, and to create compelling texts of their own. The value of an English degree is that the person who can write with elegance and precision, and who has the skills to interpret and analyze texts, is needed – and valued - in every area of work and life.
Go to Undergraduate and Graduate Course Descriptions to see examples of what our Department has to offer and browse “About Us” to learn about our faculty, graduate students, publications, events, and more.
Professor Sue Weinstein
Chair, Department of English
LSU Sophomore and First Generation College Student Publishes First Book at 20 years old
"Ten-year-old Tyhlar Holliway knew what she was going to be from an early age: a writer.
“Hi. I’m back. Did you miss me,” she wrote in her fourth grade journal. “Now I know what I want to be, which is a writer. I love to write, so this was easy for me to pick.”
Now, at 20 years old, the LSU student has become a published author.
Holliway released her first book “Navigating the Maze: The High Schooler’s Roadmap to College Readiness” on Nov. 11, 2024. The book is a guide to help high school students have a successful transition into college. With 100 pages divided into eight chapters, it is a quick and insightful read that progresses from advice for freshman to seniors."
Read the full article in The Reveille.
Spring 2025 Events and Dates to Keep in Mind
- Mardi Gras Conference (panels and speakers), estimated dates February 26-28
- Delta Mouth Literary Festival (multiple visiting authors), March 21-23
- Natalie Shapero Creative Writing visitng author, April 22, French House, 7:00 p.m.
- MFA Third-Year Reading, April 27, Baton Rouge Gallery, 4:00 p.m.
- Spring Literary Symposium (full day of spekers and panels), estimated April
- IDEA Committe speaker Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University Digital Humanities Institute, April 11
English Department News
Congratulations to Distinguished Instructor Ann Martin on being named a CxC Teaching Fellow. Ann directs our English Dual Enrollment Program and is an invaluable member of LSU English.
Congratulations to Distinguished Instructor Nolde Alexius, who has been awarded the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society of Louisiana State University 2024 Outstanding Instructor Award! Nolde has been a valued member of the English Department for many years and we are thrilled that her many contributions to students and to English have been recognized with this prestigious award.
Upcoming Events Fall 2024
- Tuesday, October 29th: Delta Journal Reading Series (Highland Coffees, 6:30 p.m.)
- Saturday, November 2nd: Louisiana Book Festival (Downtown Baton Rouge, 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.)
- Sunday, November 3rd: Delta Mouth Fundraiser, featuring readings from LSU Creative Writing Professors Adam Clay, Ariel Francisco, and Jennifer S. Davis (The Radio Bar, 2:00 p.m.)
- Friday, November 8th: Info Session for Prospective English Graduate Students at LSU (Zoom: https://tinyrul.com/ms7xc5ey, 12:00 noon)
- Wednesday, November 13th: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Grad School in Creative Writing Info Session (Allen Hall, B0005, 3:00-4:00 p.m.)
In Other News
This year, the MLA Convention will be in New Orleans, January 9-12, 2025. Since it is so close, the Department will pay registration fees for any English graduate student who wants to attend.
Faculty Accomplishments
Ariel Francisco's (Assistant Professor) forthcoming fourth collection of poems, All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins, mourns a Miami already ruined by climate change and development, and meditates on the future ruins of a city reclaimed by the sea. The collection will be available this October with Burrow Press. Ariel also has four translations available now: Dominican poet Mateo Morrison's Hard Equilibrium with Spuyten Duyvil; Dominican poet Francisco Henriquez's Moonless Night with Spuyten Duyvil; Haitian-Dominican poet Jacques Viau Renaud's Poet of One Island with Get Fresh Books; and Chilean poet Cristian Gomez Olivares' Burning of the Reichstag with Editorial Ultramarina (Spain).
Henry Goldkamp has multiple poems in Yalobusha Review, Prompt Press, NOIR SAUNA, Rougarou, Coma, Chicage Review, Poetry Northwest, Not My Style, peel lit, and mercury firs. He also has new experimental pieces of criticism in Annulet and Blue Bag Press. Last summer (2023) he had the opportunity to attend the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and was recently named Communications Director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival.
Michael Bibler (Associate Professor) signed a contract with Oxford University Press to co-edit (with Sheri-Marie Harrison of University of Missouri) the Oxford Handbook of the Southern Gothic. The book is expected to be ready for publication in 2026.
Lauren Coats (Associate Professor), Jennifer Glassford (Instructor), Casey Patterson (Assistant Professor), and Paige Watts (Instructor) completed the Summer 2024 Communication-Intensive (C-I) Teaching Lab for new C-I Teachers and received their C-I certification.
Adam Clay (Associate Professor) participated in a poetry panel at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson this September. His latest book, Circle Back, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Finally, his poem, “Self-Portrait as an Invasive Species,” was published in Mid-American Review.
Brannon Costello (Professor) joined the staff of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society as Associate Editor. This summer, he also presented essays at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature biennial conference in Gulfport, MS (“Of Grit Lit and Steel: On Charles Willeford’s Cockfighter”) and the Comics Studies Society’s virtual conference (“The Glitchy Environmentalism of Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing”).
Alison Grifa Ismaili (Senior Instructor) was invited by the Cox Academic Center for Student-Athletes to serve as a guest football coach and to attend the UCLA game in recognition of her work with student athletes.
Saiward Hromadka (Instructor) presented a paper, “The New Curb Cut: Ungrading as the Pedagogical Ramp Between Artificial Intelligence and Dyslexia in College Composition Courses,” at the South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) conference in September.
Ann Martin (Distinguished Instructor) was selected by the LSU Office of Academic Affairs and Communication across the Curriculum to join the second cohort of Communication-Intensive Teaching Fellows to inform, create, and disseminate innovative teaching development resources across campus.
Casey Patterson’s (Assistant Professor) article, “Towards a Manumissive Black Fantastic in Fandom, Fantasy, and Literature for Young People, or: A Case for the Black Hermione” (2022), received an honorable mention for the Children’s Literature Association’s Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award.
Pallavi Rastogi (Professor) has received an advance contract from LSU Press for the co-edited book (with Madoka Kishi), “Asians on the Gulf Coast: Other Races, Other Cultures” in Louisiana.”
Maurice Ruffin (Associate Professor) has had multiple readings this summer and fall, including at University of Oregon and Oregon Humanities Center, Lighthouse Writers Lit Festival (Denver), Sewanee Writers Conference, Mississippi Book Festival, International Black Writers Festival (Howard University), Brooklyn Book Festival, Eudora Welty Symposium at Mississippi University for Women, and Louisiana Book Festival. New editions of his novel The American Daughters are being published, and his work has been recognized by the 2024 John William Corrington Award (Centenary College of Louisiana), a 2024 South Arts Fellowship for Literary Arts Recipient, and the 2024 Inaugural Tennessee Williams Distinguished Arts Award (Tennessee Williams Festival).
Josh Wheeler (Associate Professor) published a feature, The Last and Final Death of Smokey Bear, exploring the cultural history of Smokey the Bear in ALTA Magazine’s special issue Reckoning with the West, edited by historian William Deverell. His previously published feature, In the Shadow of Oppenheimer (2023), for Distillations (the magazine of the Science History Institute) was included in the magazine’s annual “Best of Distillations” issue, published in August 2024.
Graduate Student Accomplishments
Azharuddin (PhD) was the recipient of the 2024 Sarah Liggett Teaching Award. He attended Harvard University's 14th Institute of World Literature 2024 Summer program, hosted by University of Cyprus.
Dahlia Li’s (MFA) short story, "The Last Sticky Thing", was published in The Writing Disorder last summer, and it was selected for the journal's “Best in Fiction" collection.
Carolina Murriel (MFA) was named one of Gambit's 40 Under 40 people doing good in New Orleans for her project Legados de Luisiana, an oral history series of Louisiana's Latin American elders, made in her capacity as a death doula. Legados was funded by a Rebirth grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. This September, her first published poem came out in Harper Collins' Here to Stay, an anthology of poets from the undocumented diaspora, edited by the Undocupoets collective. Lastly, Carolina’s production company Pizza Shark was nominated for the Podcast Academy's Ambie Award (akin to the Grammys of podcasting) in the Politics/Opinion category for their show National Emergency, a public health podcast hosted by two ER nurses who look at mass violence, disaster(mis)management, carceral health systems and more through a public health lens.
Ibrahim Nureni (PhD) has published a haiku in Acorn: A Journal of Contemporary Haiku, one of the most prestigious haiku journals in the United States. He was selected as a Fellow of the Bill Anderson Fund, a fellowship program for doctoral students engaged in disaster or medical hazard-related research across various disciplines.
Sunny Rosen’s (MFA) short story, “The Birthday Party,” received an honorable mention from this year’s AWP Intro Journals Project.
Taylor Thompson (M.A. 2023) started this Fall as a Visiting Lecturer of English with Specialization in Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies at Northern Arizona University while completing her PhD at LSU.
Seohye Kwon (Ph.D. candidate) was selected as one of the LSU representatives of the 2023 SEC Emerging Scholars program. She will receive an increase in her graduate assistantship stipend for one year and join students from across the SEC at the University of Arkansas this October for the multi-day 2023 SEC Emerging Scholars Program and Career Preparation Workshop. Seohye also published a book review of Judgment and Mercy by Martin J. Siegel titled "Irving Robert Kaufman's American Dream.” She has received a Korean Honor Scholarship from the Korean government, an award given to outstanding students of Korean heritage to encourage high achievement of academic performance and the development of leadership qualities for their future professional careers.
Sunny Rosen (MFA candidate) received a Best of the Net nomination for a poem published with Taco Bell Quarterly. She published a book review with Current Magazine on Alba de Céspedes’s 1952 novel Forbidden Notebook. Sunny was also received a scholarship in the summer to attend the Convivio Writer’s Conference in Umbria, Italy.
Alumni
Erin Little (MFA, May 2024) had her first short story, "Airplane Mode," published by Maudlin House in April 2024, when she also read poetry at the State Library with Louisiana Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin. In June 2024, Erin gave a reading from her chapbook, Personal Injury, with Sebastián H. Páramo hosted in Dallas, Texas by Deep Vellum bookstore and press.
Ian Lockaby (MFA, May 2021) had an excerpt from his forthcoming chapbook, A Seam of Electricity, published in FENCE. He also has poetry in Fall 2024 issue of The Kenyon Review, and his essay on the work of Palestinian-American poet Edward Salem was recently published in Poetry Daily. During Summer of 2024, Ian spent 3 weeks as writer in residence at Art Farm in Nebraska.
Madoka Kishi’s (PhD 2015, Professional in Residence in English) monograph, The Suicidal State: Race Suicide, Biopower, and the Sexuality of Population is slated to be published this October with Oxford University Press. The book theorizes a biopolitics of suicide by mapping the entwinement between the Progressive-Era anti-immigrant discourse of “race suicide” and period representations of literary suicide, including works by Henry James, Kate Chopin, Jack London, Gertrude Stein, and a series of Madame Butterfly texts. She is co-editing (with Pallavi Rastogi) a volume titled Asians on the Third Coast: Other Races, Other Cultures in Louisiana, which is under advance contract with LSU Press.