Tell us about your background. Why did you decide to attend UA? I’m an English and finance double major from Peachtree City, GA. I wanted to go to a big school out of state but still stay close to home. I’m also a National Merit Finalist, which means that I get 10 free semesters of tuition, and that definitely played a role in me deciding to come here! When and why did you began to write prose?  I began writing […]

Read More from UA Undergraduate, Lota Erinne, Wins Greer Marechal Memorial Award in Fiction

Alexus M. Cumbie is a senior at the University of Alabama studying Political Science and Business Management with a specialization in Human Resources. On campus, she serves as President of the NAACP, Education Advancement Chair to the Theta Sigma Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and the Vice President of the Anderson Society. Cumbie is a member of the Mortar Board, Elliot Society, and the XXXI honor societies. Her poetry has appeared in the American Library of Poetry. She […]

Read More from UA Undergraduate, Alexus Cumbie, Wins Greer Marechal Memorial Prize in Creative Non-Fiction

“My job,” says Michael Martone, “is to open up spaces of wonder and delight and surprise for the audience.” This comment comes as Martone is set to retire from UA this spring, after more than four decades teaching creative writing. But the work—the writing and responding to other people’s writing—will continue, he insists. What will go is the constant ping of e-mail and the response to surveys that request just 20 more minutes of his time. But the writing will […]

Read More from On Retirement and the Work that Comes After: Michael Martone

Wendy Rawlings’ new collection of short stories, Time for Bed, opens with a devastating story. In “Coffins for Kids!” a mother goes in search for the perfect casket after her daughter is killed in a school shooting reminiscent of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. The story ends, not with the casket, burial, or even closure for the mom or reader. Instead, we are left on the floor of the shooting range at NRA headquarters while two strangers […]

Read More from Wendy Rawlings’ Time for Bed

When the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies began in 1990, the University of Alabama and the discipline of literary studies were very different from what they are today. At that time, UA had a total enrollment of under twenty thousand students. Now commonplace scholarly methods like, the digital humanities, were either unheard of or just emerging. The majority of literature faculty were tenure-stream, both here and nationally. Much has changed in thirty years. UA has doubled to nearly forty […]

Read More from Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies Symposium Focuses on “The Future of Teaching Shakespeare”

Serena Blount earned her bachelor’s degree from Mississippi University for Women and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Alabama in the field of American Literature. She lives in one of Tuscaloosa’s historic districts and is currently compiling historical documents relating to the settlement of Newtown, which slightly predates the establishment of Tuscaloosa, and which was once Tuscaloosa County’s primary commercial center. She recently spoke with UA MFA graduate and instructor, Heather Wyatt. What is it about Tuscaloosa […]

Read More from Tuscaloosa Through Time: A Local Journey with Serena Blount

According to her publisher, Heather Wyatt is a “teacher and writer by day and food-TV junkie by night.” As an undergraduate, she majored in American Studies at The University of Alabama and earned her MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals including Number One, Puff Puff Prose Poetry and a Play, The Binnacle, ETA, Writers Tribe Review among others. Her first book, My Life With(out) Ranch, is a collection of […]

Read More from Heather Wyatt’s New Book My Life With(out) Ranch