The E decided to hang in there after all.

This Week in English | April 11-17, 2022

April 11, 2022 This Week in English

Departmental Writing Awards Open for Submission

Each year the English Department recognizes excellence in the genres of poetry, fiction, playwriting, and essay writing through the Grady, Grenfell, Hamlet, and Turner prizes. This year’s deadline for submission is April 22. Guidelines are available here (and attached) and queries can be sent to the Director of Creative Writing Greg Howard. Submissions need to be received in the english.chair@maine.edu account by 11:59pm on the 22nd (no late submissions can be considered).

Poets/Speak! Tomorrow

Tomorrow, April 12th, beginning at 4:30pm (ET) via Zoom, the twentieth annual Poets/Speak! takes place. Organized by Kathleen Ellis and sponsored by the Bangor Public Library, the event features poetry by current English majors Iris LeCates, Molly Glueck, and Rachel Ouellette, as well as alumni and poets with new collections this spring. 

Internship Funding Opportunities

There are two exciting opportunities that English students can apply for that offer financial support for students to pursue an internship. You do not have to already have an internship lined up to apply for these opportunities. Please email Dr. Katie Swacha (kathryn.swacha@maine.edu) to let her know if you plan to apply for either of these opportunities, and she can help you with your application and with finding an internship! 

  • Stephen E. King Internship Fellowships are competitive fellowships that provide undergraduate English majors and minors up to $2500 for internships that would otherwise be unpaid. Students can apply by filling out the following application. Applications are due May 1 for summer internships and September 1 for fall internships. 
  • Maine Career Catalyst’s Equity in Internships program offers $1,000 stipends specifically to black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students who face financial barriers to pursuing an internship. Application deadline is April 15th and students can apply here! 

Pacifist Heroines and Women Warriors: Mona Siegel Talk Today at 2pm

Dr. Mona Siegel will be giving a public lecture, “Pacifist Heroines and Women Warriors: Western and Chinese Paths to Women’s Rights,” in the Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall at 2:00 – 3:30 pm on Monday, April 11. Kara Peruccio’s class WGS 340, Transnational Feminisms, will be hosting the lecture. Dr. Siegel’s visit is also part of Beth Wiemann’s Guerrilla Opera Project on Rose Standish Nichols and the work of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the early 20th century. A Graduate Student and Faculty Conversation with Dr. Mona Siegel is scheduled for Tuesday, April 12, 8:30 – 9:30 am. Please email Laura Cowan for details.

English Major Presents at Maine Food Waste Solutions Summit on April 15

Hannah Mathieu is a double major in English (with a focus on Professional and Technical Writing) and Ecology and Environmental Sciences. She is also a student Intern at the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, which will host a Maine Food Waste Solutions Summit on April 15 via Zoom.

Millay Prize Reading on April 29 at 4:30pm via Zoom

In the summer of 2009, Frank and Helene Crohn generously provided the National Poetry Foundation (now the Center for Poetry and Poetics) at the University of Maine with the means to establish an Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize for Poetry. The Millay Prize seeks to reward achievement in poetry at a crucial, early stage in a writer’s development while commemorating the legacy of one of Maine’s best known and most loved poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who herself received the gift of an education at Vassar College in part through the generosity of Caroline B. Dow.

The external judge for the 2021 award was Rae Armantrout. The author of more than ten collections of poetry, Armantrout has also published a short memoir, True (1998). Her Collected Prose was published in 2007. Her most recent collections include Finalists (2022); Conjure (2020); Versed (2009), which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and a 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award; Itself (2015); Partly: New and Selected Poems (2016); Entanglements (2017); and Wobble (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award. A keynote performer in the NPF’s conference on The Poetry of the 1970s in 2010, Armantrout also read in the New Writing Series in the fall of 2009 and the spring of 2002. 

Armantrout selected the following manuscripts for the 2021 Millay Prize: 

  • First prize to first-year MA candidate  Adam Ray Wagner for “Faces and Forms”
  • Second prize to first-year MA candidate Christopher Thomas for “He Dreams Footnotes”

The celebration originally planned for fall of 2021 will take place on April 29, 2022 beginning at 4:30pm via Zoom (request link at english.chair@maine.edu). 

This Week in English 125  was sent to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the department on Monday, April 11, 2022. If you would rather not receive these weekly bulletins, please reply with <unsubscribe> in your subject line. Earlier installments are archived on our website. If you’re on Facebook, please consider joining the newly formed English Department Group.

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