"The Play's the Thing" in this Summer Research project

When Grace Gardiner ’15 puts pen to paper, she usually writes poetry that focuses on an image. But when English professor Gary Dop asked if she would like to write plays with him and another experienced playwright this summer, she jumped at the opportunity.

Gardiner is working on several plays for a Randolph College Summer Research Program project titled “The Play’s the Thing: A Communal Creative Jaunt through Dramatic Structure.” She and Dop began the summer by examining the dramatic structure in existing plays, then they set out to craft their own.

When Dop was interviewing for a position on the faculty, he taught a practice class on the opening image of a play. “That stuck with me,” Gardiner said.

Dop and Gardiner are meeting regularly with Jim Peterson, a Randolph English professor who retired last year, to read and discuss the plays that they are writing.

Gardiner’s play is about a college student who is accused of rape but has no idea whether he is guilty because he had blacked out on the night of the alleged assault. The play portrays him searching his soul and wondering whether he really is capable of harming someone. At the end of the play, the audience may have opinions, but not a definite answer, about his guilt or innocence. “It’s more about his journey,” Gardiner said.

Dop said handling the question in this way requires mastery of complex storytelling, and Gardiner is doing it well.  “We don’t know how to feel about the protagonist. He is, at moments, an unlikeable character, and that makes the journey more interesting to watch,” he said. “We’re wrestling with his guilt or innocence as well.”

Dop described the play he is writing this summer as a “postmodern magical realist surrealist absurdist play” as well as an over-the-top comedy that tells the story of a character looking for a job. “It’s certainly a non-traditional kind of drama,” he said. “I’ve played with conventions in some of my scripts, but never this much.”

Gardiner said the project has helped her expand her knowledge of how to structure and tell a story. “In a play, you can’t just take a step back and describe an image. It focuses on the dialogue and the characters’ actions,” she said. “That has been added to my arsenal of writing skills.”

Later this summer, they will send their plays to the National Playwright Center for critical feedback. They also will participate in a high school summer playwriting class that Dop has taught for a couple of years. Gardiner also hopes to organize a reading so people can experience a small performance of her play.

Kelley Swain ’07 publishes three books in 2014

Behind Randolph’s Red Brick Wall, Kelley Swain ’07 pushed pens and critiqued poetry with the writing group “the Quill Drivers.” Now across the Atlantic Ocean, she continues her prolific writing.

In fact, the London author is publishing three books this year.

photo credit: Marcos Avlonitis

In March, Valley Press published Opera di Cera, a poetry collection written as a series of monologues about the creation of the anatomical Venus, a life-sized waxwork figure she saw at a museum in France.

This spring, Cinnamon Press will publish Atlantic, a collection of poems that she has worked on since 2009. Although much of Swain’s writing addresses the history of science, Atlantic is more introspective. “It is a very personal collection which engages with family, grief, exile, and love,” she said.

Swain’s first novel, Double the Stars, will debut in September. Also from Cinnamon Press, the historical novel is about Caroline Herschel, an astronomer best known for discovering comets.

These books follow Darwin’s Microscope, her 2009 poetry collection about science history, and two volumes of poetry she has edited.

She said there are a couple of factors that led to her prolific success. “Half of the answer is hard work and discipline. If you want to be a writer, you have to write,” she said. “The other half is having an astonishing system of support. Since writing my first poem at the age of seven, my family, teachers, friends, and relationships have been supportive and constructive in my aim to become a writer, and this support has made all the difference in the world.”

Swain said a lot of that support came from friends and professors at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She said the faculty encouraged her interests in writing as well as science and helped her develop her talent and understanding. “I would not be the writer I am today without them,” she said.

Swain added that the liberal arts curriculum prepared her for life after graduation and her position at the Imperial College of London, where she teaches medical students about the confluence of science and the arts. “Though we used to joke that graduating from a liberal arts college with a degree in English would lead to dubious job prospects, it is exactly that unique educational background which has led to my being a guest lecturer at one of the top science universities in the world,” she said.

You can learn more about Swain’s work, and read excerpts from Opera di Cera and Atlantic, in an interview in the Inpress Catalogue.

Visiting writer positions named for Pearl S. Buck and Anne Spencer

Randolph College has renamed two of aspects of its Visiting Writers program in honor two authors with ties to the College and Lynchburg: Anne Spencer and Pearl S. Buck, a member of the Class of 1914.

Laura-Gray Street, an English professor and coordinator of Randolph’s creative writing program, announced the new names yesterday during an event celebrating the centennial anniversary of Buck’s graduation from the College. “Both women were from small towns and small colleges, and they produced very powerful writing and changed the world in significant ways,” Street said. “This acknowledges our debt to these writers, and it honors their connections with the College.”

Buck graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1914 and later won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. She authored more than 100 books, stories, and essays, including many that helped bridge cultural gaps between China and the west.

Anne Spencer, a well-known Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist, lived in Lynchburg with her husband, who delivered mail to the College. She also occasionally met with students from R-MWC at her home. Through a formal partnership, the College and the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum work together to provide educational opportunities to students.

Street said it is fitting to honor these women. “These are authors who we hold up as examples for our own writers here,” Street said. “Anne Spencer was an important civil rights activist and did a lot in the community. Pearl Buck’s writing takes you into the experience of another culture and immerses you in it in a way that helps you understand things that are very different than your own lives and experiences.”

The College hosts several writers each year for four-week sessions during which they focus on writing, teach a class, and give public readings. Clifford Garstang, a fiction writer who is at Randolph this fall and will give a public reading tonight, is the first official Pearl S. Buck Writer-in-Residence. Last month, Garstang won the Library of Virginia 2013 Literary Award for Fiction for his novel What the Zhang Boys Know, which tells the story of a Chinese family living in America.

Shara Lessley, a widely published poet and author of Two-Headed Nightingale, will be the first Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence and will give a public reading on March 26, 2014.

The College’s emerging writer position, which brings a writer who has not yet published a full-length book, has been renamed the Randolph Writer-in-Residence.

The Randolph College Visiting Writer Series is supported by The Carolyn Wilkerson Bell ’65 Visiting Scholar Fund, which was created and endowed through the generosity of the Maier Foundation, Inc. in 1976. The Foundation inaugurated the Visiting Scholar Program in order to encourage excellence in the composition of English prose and poetry at the College.

Prize-winning poet begins Visiting Writer series on Wednesday

Just last week, Patricia Smith won the award for writing the best poetry book published in 2012. This week, Smith will be reading some of that prize-winning poetry at Randolph College.

Smith will open Randolph’s 2013-2014 Visiting Writer Series with a public reading at 8 p.m. Wednesday in the Jack Lounge in Smith Memorial Hall.

“Patricia Smith is a force of nature, as a writer, as a teacher, as a performer,” said Laura-Gray Street, an English professor and the director of the Visiting Writer Series. “Her mojo is artistic precision and profundity with a Motown jive, making her the perfect opener for the fall Visiting Writers Series.”

Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, which won the Lenore Marshall Prize last week. She is the most successful poet in the history of the National Poetry Slam, winning that poetry performance contest four times.

The Randolph College English department also will take some time Wednesday to celebrate the College’s partnership with the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum. Shaun Spencer-Hester, the granddaughter of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer and president of the museum, will attend the event.

“Spencer’s poetry and presence left a vital legacy both in Lynchburg and in national history,” Street said. “Bringing together these two energies—Patricia Smith and Anne Spencer—for Wednesday’s reading and celebration will be powerful.”

The Visiting Writer Series brings authors to campus throughout the year to talk about their craft with students and give public readings. All visiting writer readings are free and open to the public.

Environmental poetry anthology garners great reviews

A poetry anthology co-edited by Randolph English professor Laura-Gray Street has been generating great reviews and conversations about the environment.

The Ecopoetry Anthology includes hundreds of poems about nature and the environment. The poems date from the mid-nineteenth century to today and include poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, and Muriel Rukeyser. Street compiled the anthology with Ann Fisher-Wirth, a poet and professor at the University of Mississippi. The poet Robert Haas wrote an introduction, and Trinity University Press published the book in February.

The book has drawn significant interest and praise in reviews. “It’s a must-read for everyone concerned with our disappearing environment,” said one reviewer.

“Poetry might not derail the course we’re on, but the poems gathered here just might soothe what ails us,” stated another reviewer, who added that the anthology does a good job of portraying the way poetry responded to growing understanding of the world and the impacts human activity has on nature. “These poets wrestled with the radical shift in consciousness brought on by scientific breakthroughs, and promoted astonishing growth in the field of poetics.”

 “I’ve always thought poetry could change the world,” a third reviewer wrote. “With the best energies of Robert Hass, Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street, and these assembled poets, I believe we have a chance.”

Street and Fisher-Wirth recently gave interviews that have been published in Poecology and Orion Magazine.

Street said that a substantial amount of her work on the anthology was completed during the Randolph College Summer Research program with the assistance of Ashley Hale ’08 and Anneka Freeman ’10.

New English professor publishes poem on first day teaching at Randolph

Gary Dop had good news to share on his first day teaching at Randolph College.

Dop learned today that a literary journal at Iowa State University just published his poem “The Last Thoughts of the Dying Girl.”

Dop wrote the poem for a series of persona poems that center around a murder. The poems are written from the viewpoints of a variety of people, such as the mother of the murder victim or the manager of her apartment complex. “The poem imagines the fractured thoughts of this girl as she's dying,” Dop wrote in a description of the poem. “I wanted what she said to mean nothing and everything, to sway between the moment and the dream of the moment, the dream of life.  I hoped it would be somewhat incoherent but to convey the gravity of the impending grave.”

You can read the poem here in Flyway.

Dop, an English professor, joins Randolph College after serving as the writer-in-residence at North Central University and the screenwriting faculty member in the University of Minnesota’s master of fine arts program. In addition to writing poetry, Dop dabbles in screenwriting, comedy, nonfiction, and playwriting. Father, Child, Water, his first book of poetry, will be published by Red Hen Press.

Poetry Tree Tradition Marks Arrival of Spring

You can always tell when spring has arrived. Green grass. Singing birds. Bare feet. And the Poetry Tree.

Every spring, the weeping cherry tree between the corner of Main Hall and the Sundial sprouts green leaves, pink blossoms and verse. Students and faculty use ribbon to hang copies of their original and favorite poems to the tree’s branches.

Jim Peterson, an accomplished poet, playwright, novelist, and Randolph English professor, likes the tradition. “Poems and creativity are as organic to our lives as leaves are to trees. The impulse to shape our thoughts and feelings into a written form that can be shared is one that many people have, and the poetry tree provides them with a non-academic, non-threatening way to do it. And besides, it's just fun.”

Like the origin of many campus traditions, the history of the poetry tree is a bit mysterious.

Retired professor Mary Brewer Guthrow ‘65 places it back as far as the 1960s. “My best memory is that my professor, Margaret Raynal, hung the ‘Loveliest of Trees’ by A.E. Housman out there every year and then other poems from other poem-hangers appeared.” 

Like spring blossoms, however, the beauty is short lived. When the rains came this year, the ink ran, obscuring the words. If you look closely, though, you can still make out a phrase on one stained parchment... “Vita Abundantior.”

Acclaimed poet Ira Sadoff set for reading at Randolph

This Wednesday, the Randolph community will be treated to a reading by poet Ira Sadoff. The author of eight poetry collections, Sadoff has published poetry in works such as the Harper Anthology of American Literature and Great American Prose Poems. He has received the Creative Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts as well as a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Most recently though, Sadoff has been serving as Randolph’s Writer in Residence as a part of the English Department’s Visiting Writers Series. During his stay at Randolph, he is teaching a one credit, special topics English class that is open to Randolph students. He will also make appearances in several other classes.

“It is an advantage for Randolph students to be exposed to a wide range of authors,” said Laura-Gray Street, an English professor at Randolph. Street is responsible for bringing Sadoff, who served as her thesis advisor, to campus. “He was a role model for me. He has such warmth, energy, and generosity as well as a remarkable presence,” Street said.

The poetry reading will start at 8pm in the Alice Ashley Jack Room. Refreshments will be served. This is also a Passport program event for First Year students. Any questions about the event can be sent to Street lstreet@randolphcollege.edu.

Later in the semester, be on the lookout for one more reading by author Allison Hedge Coke.

"Flashes of War" author visits Randolph, will give public reading on Feb. 6

“What is it about a small college that feels like opportunity?” Katey Schultz wrote in a recent entry on her website. While teaching a creative writing course at Randolph College, she has found an environment that fosters her creativity as she pens a novel about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Schultz has been writing fiction about the wars in the Middle East for a few years. Although she has never been to the Middle East and does not have family members or friends serving in those wars, she became keenly interested in the topic when she realized that terms related to those wars had become a part of the normal lexicon for students in the arts-centered high school where she taught.

“I was amazed how the language of the global war on terror had infiltrated the everyday speech of the average teenager,” she said. “They don’t have any memories of this country when we weren’t at war. They have grown up in such a different world, with a familiarity of warfare and violence and oppression and power.”

“My little cousins, in 5th or 6th grade, they know what a jihadist is,” she added. “I think that’s changing society.”

Visiting Writer Series

Public reading by Katey Schultz

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 8 p.m.
Alice Ashley Jack room,
Smith Memorial Hall

Schultz began reading first-person accounts of the wars, watching footage from YouTube and documentaries, and making lists of military words. That research grew into her first book of short stories, Flashes of War, which will be published in May. Each story explores a question, such as why someone enlists in the military during wartime, or what it is like to be fighting a war that many at home are not thinking about. Some of those stories inspire the novel she is writing now.

A couple of years ago, Schultz learned that she had lost a writing prize she had sought, but she noticed that the winner had been an Emerging Writer in Residence at Randolph College. That piqued her interest, and she contacted Randolph’s English department.

The Emerging Writer program is part of the College’s Visiting Writer Series. It brings young writers who have not yet published a full-length book to teach a course for several weeks and to present a public reading.

Schultz has enjoyed working closely with Randolph students and teaching them about the creative process of writing. “They are curious about what you can do with creative writing, and they want to do a great job,” she said. “Everyone here is trying to learn and wants to be here. When you share those two basic principles, a lot of things can happen.”

Schultz will present a public reading of stories from Flashes of War on Feb. 6 at 8 p.m., in the Alice Ashley Jack Room on the second floor of Smith Memorial Hall. She hopes that her audience will feel the passion behind her work and think about the implications of war. “My stories are really bearing witness to something that we’ve done a pretty good job not looking at,” she said. “I hope it invites people to look at these wars again.”

2012 alumna enjoys life in Spain while working on master's degree

Many Randolph graduates travel and see the world after college. Others go straight into graduate school, and others go to work. Jennifer Bundy ’12 has the best of all three worlds.

Bundy is teaching American culture and the English language in Spain, taking weekend breaks to see sights in Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, she is working on her master’s degree through a program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO).

“I’ve always been intrigued by the culture in Spain, and I’ve always wanted to see it in person,” Bundy said. “It’s been incredible.”

Jennifer Bundy ’12 at the Seville Cathedral in Spain.

Tina Johnson, director of the Experiential Learning Center, helped Bundy find the Council on International Educational Exchange’s Teach Abroad program. Jim Peterson, an English professor, told her about UNO’s low-residency master of fine arts program, which allows her to attend a few in-person sessions while submitting work electronically in between. Both programs accepted her.

Shortly after she graduated, Bundy attended a 10-day retreat at a lodge in Nebraska City to take classes for the masters program. A few months later, she moved to southwestern Spain to teach English, geography, and other subjects at a middle school in Utrera. She also found a second job teaching English to adults.

Moving to Spain was Bundy’s first time outside of the United States. Fortunately, she said her experiences at Randolph prepared her for the experiences she is having. Working as a writing tutor at Randolph gave her practice in teaching English skills. The diversity of the student body helped her know how to adapt to living in another culture, and the personal responsibility of the academic curriculum and her senior honors project helped prepare her to be independent.

Jennifer Bundy ’12 enjoys teaching  English, history,  and
other subjects in a middle school in the town of Utrera.

In between teaching and writing, Bundy has traveled to numerous places in Spain, Portugal, France, and Morocco. She recently spent a weekend with Geneveive Christoff ’67 and her family in Madrid. Bundy chronicles her adventures online at http://jenniferamb.wordpress.com. While she enjoys the travel, she enjoys the cultural immersion more.

“Traveling and seeing the monuments is fantastic—these places are famous for good reason—but taking the time to connect here is my favorite part,” Bundy said. “When I’m 50, I’ll talk about the woman who works in the little panadería (bread store) across the street from my house. Or the guy who works at my school's café and makes me orange juice while joking with me in Spanish. All of the professors at the middle school where I work are so different and so funny.

“That’s the best part: The people.”

How to build ‘soft’ employment skills? Randolph professor and career development director weigh in

Launching a career requires more than the skills and knowledge necessary for getting a job done. Employers increasingly are looking for people with “soft skills” that might not, at first thought, relate directly to a person’s on-the-job duties.

Two online articles recently raised this point. One explained that employers are struggling to find workers who can answer the phone professionally or who have good interpersonal skills. Another explained why one CEO refuses to hire people who cannot use correct spelling and grammar.

Krista Leighton, director of career development, meets with students
to help them assess and improve their preparation for careers.

Krista Leighton, director of career development at Randolph College, explained that those skills and attributes are crucial because of the message they send about employees and the employers they represent. “One person who does not adhere to being professional in every way can affect many people in the organization,” she said.

For example, a bad experience with a phone call—an unprofessional greeting or an incorrect call transfer—could sour a customer’s experience with a company, Leighton said.

Bunny Goodjohn, a Randolph English professor and director of tutoring services, added that grammar and spelling help ensure clear and effective communication.

Bunny Goodjohn, an English professor, recommends
reading well-written material to improve writing skills.

“We live in a world of mindless writing—hasty e-mails, two-thumb texts, a scribbled post-it note here and there,” Goodjohn said. However, “I am seeing a groundswell of support for good writing among employers in a host of different professions from sales to marketing, from human resources to engineering.”

Here are some tips Goodjohn and Leighton pointed out for developing the kinds of skills and attributes that will, in combination with an excellent education, help people get jobs after college.

Goodjohn recommends that the best way to develop more professional writing skills requires reading good material. “My advice to students would be that they read something decent with a group of friends and then talk about it. It doesn’t have to be something heavy—they just have to engage with the words,” she said.

Well-written magazines such as Sports Illustrated are a good start, she added.

Randolph’s Writing Across the Curriculum program helps students develop these skills by incorporating expectations for good writing in every course, not just English classes, she said.

Leighton said students should find a mentor who can honestly assess their career development. In addition to professors and former employers, students can find this type of mentoring in Randolph’s Experiential Learning Center. There, Leighton and other staff members can help students assess their career interests, explore internship opportunities, and engage in other career preparation activities.

Leighton pointed out that students can, and should, take advantage of those services as early as their first year in college. “The earlier a college student works on this process, the more satisfied and successful they will be in their career preparation.”

Summer research yields new online English test, insight into college writing preparedness

A rite of passage for most first-year college English students is the traditional test to assess the student’s skills with the language. At the beginning of the semester, students taking the test might read over a collection of sentences and indicate whether each sentence is grammatically correct.

This summer, a Randolph professor and student set out to make a better test for those purposes.

Bunny Goodjohn, director of the writing program, said that the College has been using an online English skills assessment test that was free and worked well—when it worked at all.

“The idea was brilliant, but the execution was patchy,” Goodjohn said. Often, the website that hosted the test stopped working. “So I wanted to see if I could come up with an equivalent that would give us the same results but that would be more reliable, and something that we could tailor to our own needs.”

Goodjohn and Lauren Dowdle ’13 decided to work on the idea during the Summer Research Program.

As part of their research, Dowdle studied trends in students’ preparation for college-level English courses. She collected journal articles about the topic, and she also analyzed statistics about SAT scores.

Average SAT scores have usually risen in recent years, but Dowdle discovered that a high SAT verbal score does not always mean someone can write at the college level. Through further research, including more than 30 interviews, she learned that many students feel like high school writing courses did not prepare them for what college courses required. “Many students aren’t prepared for the expectations of their professors,” she said. “In high school, grammar is not covered as much. I heard that a lot in my interviews.”

Goodjohn said that Dowdle’s research shows a disconnect between what high schools prepare students for and what college professors expect.

Goodjohn focused her research on finding a way to recreate an online English assessment test. With help from Randolph College Information Technology, she found a way to administer the test online with SurveyMonkey.com. That platform has proven more reliable, she said.

Several Randolph English professors plan to start using Goodjohn’s assessment test this fall. Currently, the test uses the same questions as the free test formerly used by the College, but Goodjohn plans to rewrite them so that each sentence related to Randolph College, reflecting the College’s culture, history, and traditions.

Former Emerging Writer-in-Residence gets book contract and offers advice for Randolph students

Anthony D’Aries arrived at Randolph College last year with two tasks ahead of him. The first task was to teach a course for seven weeks. Second, he wanted to finish a book he had worked on for years.

Bunny Goodjohn, a Randolph English professor, dropped him off at an apartment where he would stay on campus. When she returned to check on him a few hours later, she found him sitting on the floor surrounded by copies of his manuscript.

“When I got to Randolph, I had a big chunk of material. I was at a point where I felt I needed to print all this and physically cut things out and move them around,” said D’Aries, the College’s 2011 Emerging Writer-in-Residence. “By the end of my time there, I felt really solid about it.”

D’Aries has now secured a publisher for The Language of Men, the memoir he polished at Randolph. The book is due out from Hudson Whitman / Excelsior College Press this summer.

Watch this video to hear Anthony D'Aries read from The Language of Men during his time as Randolph College's Visiting Writer-in-Residence in 2011. At the time, his memoir was under the working title Aural History.

Goodjohn said D’Aries’ achievement demonstrates the value that students can receive from Randolph College’s Emerging Writer-in-Residence program. Each year, that program invites an author who has recently received a master of fine arts but has not yet published a full-length book to teach a creative writing class at Randolph.

“Working with someone who is a fine writer, who is pursuing the grail of publication but has not yet found it, makes the process seem more do-able for a novice,” Goodjohn said. “If students can work with an emerging writer who then completes that emerging process and becomes a published author, it becomes more real.”

The experience also helps students understand the hard work required for becoming a published writer, Goodjohn said.

D’Aries said his time at Randolph provided him with an excellent opportunity to complete his book while also working with talented students. “The students at Randolph brought a lot to the class. A lot of them were strong writers to start with,” he said. “I was really excited to work with all the students.”

Advice for Aspiring Writers

D’Aries offered a few bits of advice for his former students based on his experience since he visited Randolph:

     1. Trust your instincts. “You have to really trust what you're writing about, even if it seems totally irrelevant. If certain things keep appearing in your work, your subconscious is telling you something.”

     2. Avoid getting too much feedback too early in the writing process. Give yourself time to develop your voice. “You still need feedback, but getting that too early can be more stunting than helpful.”

     3. Don’t put too much faith in writing habits—such as what time of day to write and how to get started—just because they have worked for others. “You've got to develop your own habits.”

     4. Don’t be too much of a perfectionist. “You have to get to a certain point where you allow yourself to be satisfied with it, where you allow yourself to feel like it’s finished.”

Bunny Goodjohn wins poetry prize

Bunny Goodjohn teaches English, writes poetry
and fiction, and recently won a poetry prize

Bunny Goodjohn ’04 answered what she thought was a routine phone call, only to find out about an exciting honor she had not expected.

“I answered the phone and discovered I was on a conference call with the Reed Magazine editorial staff,” said Goodjohn, who teaches English and directs the College’s writing program and tutoring services. “The editor told me the good news.”

Goodjohn learned that she had won the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry, a prize sponsored by Reed Magazine and San Jose State University. The award comes with a $1,000 prize and publication in the magazine. Then the editors added to her surprise and delight by reading the remarks that the contest’s judge, Kim Addonizio, had written about Goodjohn’s work. (Addonizio is a poet whose work Goodjohn admires.)

Addonizio praised Goodjohn for “an ability to tell a story not just for the sake of narrative, but to get at a deeper truth; sentences that were complex and layered, as well as musical; and a sense of real presence on the page.”

“To have her consider my work and find it worthy is such a tremendous honor,” Goodjohn said.

Goodjohn submitted several poems to the contest, including two that she wrote during graduate school, one that she wrote after a camping trip in West Virginia two years ago, and one inspired by Paula Rego’s painting Family. The newest poem she entered, titled “Running 24 North,” came to her after she saw two stray dogs stop traffic outside Rustburg, Virginia.

Goodjohn studied writing and wrote a novel during her time at Randolph, and then she completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Southern Maine. She then returned to the College as an English professor.

Her work has also been published in The Cortland Review (in 2002 and again in 2004), The Texas Review, Connecticut Review, and Zone 3.

English professor asked again to pronounce for regional spelling bee

Margie Lippard takes the stage
during one of her previous rounds
as a spelling bee pronouncer.

Between teaching composition at Randolph College and raising money for local nonprofits, Margie Lippard does not have a lot of free time on hand. But these days, what free time she does have is often spent reciting words and definitions.

Lippard will be the pronouncer for the Scripps Regional Spelling Bee next month. This will be her third year pronouncing all the bee’s spelling words, along with definitions, sentences, and other helps contestants can ask for. Although it requires careful practice, it is an event Lippard has come to look forward to.

“For a teacher of composition, it’s a pleasure to have students expand their vocabulary, know how to use words in sentences, and be really sensitive to the sounds of a word, to work it out if they don't quite know the word,” said Lippard.

Pronouncing words accurately and well comes naturally to Lippard: Her first job after college was teaching writing and speech at Harvard Business School. In her current full-time position as director of development for United Way of Central Virginia, she addresses audiences throughout the region to discuss the needs of nonprofit agencies and fundraising.

In 2010, Lippard began teaching “Finding Your Voice,” a writing course taken by many first year students at Randolph College. She likes being back in the classroom several hours each week.

“I thoroughly enjoy seeing the students progress in their writing and their ability to express their voice, she said. “They are so intelligent and curious and have great ideas. I love the mix of student-athletes and non-athletes, male students and female students, and multicultural students. The more diverse the classroom, the better the experience.”

Lippard said writing is both an art and a science, with spelling placed in the science side. In a world where Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging can foster communication with hasty misspellings and abbreviations, teaching at Randolph and serving in the spelling bee provide a breath of fresh air, she said.

“Spelling matters. It matters for a sense of pride as a writer. It matters to the reader, who relies on accurate spelling to convey meaning. It shows respect for communication and literature,” Lippard said. “Without correct spelling, our communication can become incoherent.”

“I see a great synergy between the mission of the spelling bee and the mission of the English Department here, and also the mission of the United Way, where one of our impact areas is education,” she said.

This year’s spelling bee will be held at 9 a.m. on Saturday, February 18, at the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Middle School for Innovation. The winner of the regional spelling bee will advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

David Caplain to read poetry at Randolph College

David Caplan will read from his poetry on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2010 at 8 p.m. in Jack Lounge of Smith Hall on the campus of Randolph College.

Caplan specializes in 20th- and 21st-century American literature. His scholarly interests include poetics and contemporary poetry. His published works include Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form (Oxford University Press 2004; paperback 2006) Poetic Form: An Introduction (Longman, 2006), and In the World He Created According to His Will (poems) (University of Georgia Press / VQR Poetry Series, 2010).

He serves as a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, and an affiliated researcher (Chercheur Affilié) at the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Poétique Appliquée at the University of Liège where he was a Fulbright lecturer.

RISE Grant Helps Senior Attend National Design Competion

Senior theatre major Melissa Gilbert was nominated for a national design award for her costumes (see note below) from a campus production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” but to present her designs in competition this February, she must finance travel costs to Tennessee.

Instead of footing the bill herself, Gilbert tapped into a new grant program at Randolph College called RISE — Randolph’s Innovative Student Experience — which awards up to $2,000 to fund scholarship, research and creative pursuits to students during their junior or senior years. After submitting a proposal, she was awarded $300 to cover travel expenses to the conference.

“It made it a lot more accessible for me, because otherwise it would have been a real big stretch,” she said.

“I think that the school getting behind the students and helping them apply what they learn is fantastic. Often times it is difficult to do that extra research or travel to that conference because of finances.”

Read the rest of this story in the Lynchburg News & Advance > > >

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Melissa Gilbert was nominated for a Barbizon Costume Design Award for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival: Region IV in recognition of her costumes for the fall 2009 Randolph College production of The Rocky Horror Show. Gilbert is pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree in theatre and British literature and will graduate in spring 2010. You can view her design portfolio at her website.