Category: News


Interview with Emily Pitts Donahoe

“Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly at your service” Shakespeare has a secret admirer and her name is Emily Pitts Donahoe, an M.A. student at The University of Alabama. From studying Shakespeare to participating in the Shakespearean Staged Reading Series at UA, Donahoe’s love for Shakespeare and the Renaissance is apparent. Donahoe has recently accepted an offer from the English program at Notre Dame, where she’ll be pursuing her PhD […]

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Nichole Corbett: Fulbright Scholarship Recipient Talks Turkish Culture & Future Screenwriting Plans

Nicole Camille Corbett is a graduate of The University of Alabama and a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship who is currently teaching English in Turkey. I sat down with Corbett on FaceTime and spoke with her about her experiences abroad and her future plans. You have recently earned your degree in English and Dramatic Writing. What sparked your interest in these fields and how do you hope to use your degree?  I want to write comedy for television. I really […]

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Alabama Student Takes on a Different Culture

Brianna Adams graduated from The University of Alabama in 2015 and is spending her second year in the Czech Republic where she lives in Otrokovice, a city in the Morava region of the country. In Otrokovice, she is undertaking the English Teaching Assistant Program, where she teaches students ranging from 11 to 19. Adams was offered this amazing opportunity through the Fulbright Scholarship, which she applied to after encouragement from a friend. She admits that choosing where to go was […]

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Russell Willoughby: An Interview Overseas

Russell Willoughby is a University of Alabama Fulbright Scholarship recipient. The Fulbright Scholarship Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. At The University of Alabama, the Fulbright Scholarship Program is offered to students who wish to apply their skills and education through teaching opportunities abroad. Where are you currently studying and teaching? I am […]

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Parker White: Rhodes Scholar Finalist

During his time as an undergraduate at The University of Alabama, Parker White participated in a broad, well-rounded education in the liberal arts, having been the chapter president of the International English Honors Society Sigma Tau Delta as well as a member of the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, studying English, Classics, and creative writing primarily. During his time at the University, he also co-founded DewPoint, a literary magazine that serves as an outlet for the creative writing of UA undergraduates and […]

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Professor Whiting: Educator

Professor Fred Whiting, currently in his fifteenth year of teaching at UA, has witnessed The University of Alabama expand and change extensively during his time here (“We now have a Chick-Fil-A as well as an Arby’s,” he remarks). He also notes changes in faculty dress protocols over the years, citing a former colleague who regularly wore a muscle tee and flip-flops to class. Whiting’s contributions to the Department of English and academic environment generally, however, are somewhat less flippant. Whiting […]

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Professor Luke Niiler: New Director of the First-Year Writing Program

The First-Year Writing Program works with freshman to help them develop their skills as college and academic writers. At the head of this program is Professor Luke Niiler. Professor Niiler has been at the University of Alabama since 2007. Along with being the Director of the First-Year Writing Program, he also teaches English Composition 101 and 102. I had the pleasure to sit down with Professor Niiler and learn more about who he is and what he has in store […]

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Professor Amy Dayton: New Director of the Writing Center

You earned your PhD from the University of Arizona. Are you from Arizona? What brought you to Alabama? I am originally from St. Louis, Missouri. I grew up in Florissant, which is the next town over from Ferguson, which no one had ever heard of before last summer. As a college student, I studied abroad in France, and then after graduation, I went back to teach English in a high school in Nantes. After that, I moved to Arizona to […]

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Inside the Mind of Jason McCall

Jason McCall is an Instructor at The University of Alabama who works with Slash Pine Press, a poetry and mixed genre chapbook publisher. McCall has published four poetry chapbooks, including Dear Hero, which won the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press poetry prize. Tell us a little about yourself and your involvement with Slash Pine Press. I’ve been an instructor in the department since 2009. Currently, I help with organizing the annual Slash Pine Writing Festival and reading manuscripts for the poetry […]

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Laura Ezell’s A Record of Our Debts

When Laura Ezell received a call from Michael Czyzniejewski, the editor of Moon City Review, that her collection of short stories and poems, A Record of Our Debts, had won the Short Fiction Award, she was “over the moon.” The prize included publication and $1000. Ezell will perform a reading of her work at Missouri State University, home of MCP. A Record of Our Debts focuses on a few relatively isolated and fatalistic characters. The book began as her master’s […]

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