Congratulations to the 15 finalists selected from 79 total entries in the 2020-2021 Denise Gess Literary Awards competition, sponsored by the Writing Arts Department.
 
Winners in each category of the first-, second-, and third-place prizes – of $200, $100, and $50 respectively – will be announced at an Awards Ceremony and Student Reading the evening of Wednesday, April 28 at 6:30 p.m. Click here to join in the festivities.
 
Two-person teams of faculty judges worked independently in each category to select four students as finalists in the Poetry category, five in Nonfiction, and six in Fiction.
​

• The four finalists in Poetry, chosen from 30 entries, are:
  
  • senior Dina Folgia,
    
  • junior Rachel Ventrella,
    
  • junior Skyla Everwine, and
    
  • sophomore Sophia Romano.
• The five Nonfiction finalists, out of 18 entries, are:
  
  • junior Caleigh Reed,
    
  • senior Dina Folgia,
    
  • senior John Reilly,
    
  • junior Rachel Ventrella, and
    
  • graduate student Zachary Short.
• In Fiction, from 31 entries, the six finalists are:
  
  • graduate student Ariana Tucker,
    
  • junior Chelsea Valcourt,
    
  • sophomore Chloe Mortier,
    
  • senior Dan Wash,
    
  • graduate student Katelyn Sullivan, and
    
  • graduate student Taylor Blum.

 
Please contact co-coordinators Professor Lisa Jahn-Clough or Professor Stephen Royek for more information.

Check out Heather Lanier's reading of her book, Raising a Rare Girl, hosted on Facebook Live with Glassworks Magazine!

John Warner Visit, Related Events Just a Week Away
The Rowan Writing Center is celebrating its 10th anniversary of helping students become stronger, more confident writers by hosting a series of events next week featuring John Warner. The author of Why They Can’t Write and The Writer’s Practice, Warner will be speaking at the Rowan Art Gallery at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 5 and at the Chamberlain Student Center (Room 221) at 9 a.m. on Friday March 6. . . . In preparation for the visit, a pair of reading group discussions focusing on Why They Can’t Write will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, March 4 in Victoria 422 and at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon in the fifth-floor conference room of Victoria Hall. Please contact Writing Center Assistant Director Leslie Allison to RSVP for any or all of these events.

Congratulations to Our 2019 Adjunct Awards Winners
Adjunct instructors Donna Mehalchick-Opal and Daniel Boulos are the 2019 winners of the Rowan Writing Arts Adjunct Award for Outstanding Teaching. This award is given annually to two adjunct instructors who represent the best of writing instruction practices and provide our students with high-quality writing instruction and a meaningful learning experience. Both Donna and Daniel will receive a $250 cash award. . . . Kudos also to the multiple winners of the 2019 Adjunct Award for Excellence in Teaching: Melissa Perry, Frank Ward, Michael Fisher, Betsy Langley, Christina Maxwell, Deborah Scott, Christopher Tirri, Grayson Morley, Jenna Burke, Ann Caputo, Mark Krupinski, Beth Mecca, Nazneen Mandviwalla, and Tyler Riggs. The Excellent in Teaching honor goes to adjunct instructors based on their adjunct review teaching portfolio materials.

Denise Gess Award Entries Due March 20; Ceremony Set for April 16
The final weekday of spring break – Friday, March 20 – is the deadline for submissions for the 2020 Denise Gess Literary Awards. First-, second-, and third-place winners for the best poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction entries will be announced the week of April 6. Cash awards in each category of $200 (first place), $100 (second place) and $50 (third place) will be presented on Thursday, April 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Rowan University Welcome Center, 131 Rowan Boulevard, as the winners read their works. Click here for contest rules and submission procedures, and contact contest coordinator Lisa Jahn-Clough for more details.

Singularity Press Holding Book Drive March 10 Through 12
The Writing Arts Department’s Singularity Press will be holding a fund-raising book drive on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, March 10, 11 and 12 in the first-floor lobby of Victoria Hall. If you have books to drop off for the sale, please leave them at Victoria Hall Room 512, the office of Singularity Press Faculty Advisor Megan Atwood. Please stop by to peruse the selection and maybe pick up a long-forgotten classic you’d like to read or re-read. Please contact Megan for more details.

Glassworks Spring Issue Debut Scheduled for March 26
Issue 20 – the Spring 2020 issue – of the Glassworks literary journal will debut at a reading scheduled for Thursday, March 26 at 6:30 p.m. at the Rowan Art Gallery, 301 High Street. Authors published in the new issue and previous ones will be presenting their work and Glassworks interns and staff members will be reading as well. Light refreshments will be available. Glassworks is a publication of the Master of Arts in Writing program in Rowan’s Ric Edelman College of Communication and Creative Arts (RECCCA). Please contact Editor-In-Chief Katie Budris for more information.
 
Writing Arts Graduate Student Has Essay Published
Jackie Domenus, a student in the Master of Arts in Writing program, had her essay “A Learned Behavior” published in Entropy Magazine. The work is a hybrid personal essay/cultural criticism written for colleague Heather Lanier’s “Innovations and Experiments in the Essay” graduate-level course. The piece explores the lack of LGBTQ representation in movies and television shows targeted at children. Click here to read Jackie’s essay.

For Your Calendar:

• Tuesday, March 3 is the date of this year’s Student Career Fair jointly sponsored by the RECCCA and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Chamberlain Student Center Ballroom. Click here for more details.

​
Stephen A. Royek M.A.
Lecturer, Writing Arts, Rowan University
Chair, Faculty Senate Awards Committee
Lecturer Representative, Faculty Center Advisory Board
     Victoria Hall, Room 521
     Phone: 856-906-4755
     Email: royek@rowan.edu 

Sartorial splendor awaits with Rowan Writing Arts swag
 The Rowan Writing Arts “swag site” now is up and running! Be among the first to sport your own t-shirt, polo shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie (left), baseball cap, or canvas tote bag emblazoned with our new department logo. Proceeds from the sale – which ends Sunday, February 23 at midnight – benefit the Writing Arts Club. Click here for a look at the selection and contact either Kristine Lafferty or Jade Jones for more information.

It’s Official: Welcome Center to Host Gess Awards Ceremony
 Rowan Writing Arts will be the first department or office on campus to hold an evening event at Rowan University’s new Welcome Center when the 2020 Denise Gess Literary Awards ceremony takes place at the Rowan Boulevard location (next to the Dawn to Dusk eatery and across from the La Scala’s Fire restaurant). The ceremony will be Thursday, April 16 at 6:30 p.m. with awards being presented for outstanding student submissions in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction categories. Details, including deadlines for entries, will be available soon.​

Just announced: John Warner, (left), author of Why They Can’t Write and The Writer’s Practice, will be on campus Thursday, March 5 and Friday March 6 for a series of events with students and faculty, according to Rowan Writing Center (RWC) Director Celeste Del Russo. The full agenda for his visit still is being compiled and will be made available in upcoming Events Update issues.

If you are interested in taking part in this event, please email RWC Assistant Director Leslie Allison to volunteer. Help is being sought for assistance during Warner’s keynote address, escorting the author around campus, and other related tasks.

The RWC also is organizing an in-person and online “book club” focusing on Why They Can’t Write in anticipation of Warner’s visit. Please email Leslie by this Friday, February 7 if you’d like to participate. You will be contacted with more information.
 
Do you have a new publication, a reading, or any other event of interest coming up? Please let me know so I can let our colleagues know in the weekly Rowan Writing Arts Events Update newsletter. Stop by Victoria 521 or email me at royek@rowan.edu to give me the 4-1-1.

Breaking News:
Tentative Date, Location(s) Released for 2020 Gess Awards
Pending final confirmation, the 2020 Denise Gess Literary Awards will be presented on Thursday, April 16 during a ceremony at either the new Rowan University Welcome Center on Rowan Boulevard or the Edelman Planetarium in Science Hall. Once the details are approved, the entry submission deadline along with other salient information will be publicized. The competition, named in honor of the late Writing Arts Associate Professor Denise Gess (left), offers cash awards of $200 for first place, $100 for second and $50 for third in the categories of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. All currently enrolled Rowan undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to submit their original work for consideration and entries by the same student are allowed in more than one genre.
 
Colleague Corner:

• Popper the Poltergeist and The Greenbriar Ghost, the latest books from Megan Atwood were published on January 1. They’re both part of the Real Life Ghost Stories series. Megan has another book, Attack of the Deadly Diapers, due out in March.
• “Noise over signal: Phonography culture as participatory,” an article written by Jason Luther with Patrick Williams from Syracuse University, was published in the January issue of SoundEffects, an open-access, international, peer-reviewed sound studies journal from the Danish Research Council of Humanities and The Royal Danish Library.
• “Transnational Networks of Literacy and Materiality: Coltan, Sexual Violence, and Digital Literacy,” by Rachael Shapiro, was published in the November 2019 issue of College English. (Note: The link is to a 625-word sample.)
• Three new humor articles from Keri Mikulski hit the internet in the last few weeks: “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Flu Season: Holiday Songs as Heard by the Health-Anxious” on the Robot Butt website, “Quiz: Are These Family Gifts Third-Party Seller Garbage, or Legit Holiday Treasure?” from Points In Case, and “Normal Reaction to The Rise of Skywalker” from humorwriters.org, a publication of the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop at the University of Dayton.

The Barnes Foundation offers 10-week summer internships for college students. This year, they are pleased to offer funded opportunities for students who are from southern New Jersey or attend school in southern New Jersey, thanks to generous funding from the Schultz Hill Foundation.

​The summer internship program runs from the first week in June through the second week of August. Interns must commit to a minimum of eight consecutive weeks and two days per week, and must be on-site or available to attend enrichment activities every Friday during the program.

In order to apply, students need two letters of recommendation, a resume, cover letter, and transcript. So if you are interested, it's best to start working on your application ASAP. 

Click here to apply.

You can read more about the internship program on their website:
 https://www.barnesfoundation.org/about/careers-and-volunteering.

Or by downloading this flyer here. 

Applications are open for the PSE&G Green Teams Internship Program for summer 2020. This is a paid, 10-week, residential internship program hosted at Montclair State University between June 1 and August 5. The application deadline is January 22nd at midnight.

Applications are open to all majors! If you are selected to participate, you would work on a multi-disciplinary team to solve real-world sustainability problems submitted by major companies. The program emphasizes skills that can be put to immediate use in your career, and the internship programs has a very strong track record of job placement for program alumni. You would also expand your peer and professional network in sustainability-related fields.

Applications are due in two weeks, and selection is competitive! Start learning about the program now: 
https://www.montclair.edu/pseg-sustainability-institute/green-teams/

For more information, contact Dr. Amy Tuininga  (tuininga @ montclair . edu) or visit http://www.montclair.edu/iss to apply or learn more. 

On Monday night, students, faculty, staff, and family members gathered to discuss the tragic recent events. Three students have passed away this semester by suicide. This has been a hard time for students and faculty alike. On Monday night, the scheduled SGA meeting was open to all to discuss these recent events and how Rowan University plans to move forward.

Members of Rowan University faculty were in attendance, including the Director of the Wellness Center Scott Woodside and Associate Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Amy Hoch, the Dean of Students Drew Tinnin, President Ali Houshmand, as well as a representative from the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services. 

The night began with a few of these members addressing the crowd and discussing some of the services the Wellness Center provides. Students then began a dialogue on mental health and their experiences with the Wellness Center. Students brought thoughtful questions, criticisms, and suggestions, and the Wellness Center faculty were receptive to them. 

Although the event officially ended at 9 pm, many students and faculty stayed past 10 pm to continue their conversations. Faculty members that I spoke to were concerned about the recent events and receptive to student suggestions. Many students and faculty assured that Monday night was only the beginning of this important dialogue on mental health and support for students in distress.