LitMod Students Celebrate a Year of Living Creatively

On May 26, English MA students displayed the creative and professional skills they developed throughout the academic year. The celebratory gathering at a local pub consisted of creative readings, a collaborative erasure poetry project, and a collegial award ceremony honoring the 2015–2016 MA cohort. 

Readings were given by several of the Literatures of Modernity MA candidates, including Anna Kozak, Phoenix Simms, Kelly Duval, and Tatum Dooley, as well as faculty members Dennis Denisoff and Dale Smith. The prose and poetry explored an array of themes, including isolation; sunlight and ancestry; regional memory, lore and speculation; and loss of home and family.  

Throughout the evening, students also collaborated on a set of erasure poems. The pieces are being collated into a multi-authored work to be published as a chapbook, giving students a keepsake of their year of creative collaboration.

The finale was the “LitModdies” awards ceremony, which celebrated everyone’s professional, academic, and personal qualities. Designed and selected by the students themselves, the awards gave MA candidates the opportunity to acknowledge the accomplishments of their peers. The LitModdies exemplified the supportive dynamic the cohort maintained throughout their year together.

The students would like to extend special thanks to Dennis Denisoff and Dale Smith for reading their work, and for their support at this event and throughout the year. This celebratory event would not have been possible without the support of the Office of the Dean of Arts.