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Alumni Writing Workshop |
Click
here to view the alumni online workshop
The first Melvin M. Peterson Alumni Workshop was held June
20-22 at UE. This year’s workshop focused primarily
on metrical poetry writing. Margaret McMullan, chair of
the Department of English, said the purpose of the workshop
was to foster the talent of UE graduates and encourage those
alumni to continue writing and publishing. |
"They
all love poetry and are eager to pursue it again."
--Margaret McMullan |
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"The success of our talented alumni reflects
on UE. The eight participants in this workshop are among
the finest students we’ve ever had. They all love
poetry and they are eager to pursue it again," she
said. |
| Peterson has been a generous benefactor for the University,
McMullan noted -- most recently with gifts to endow the
Melvin M. Peterson Chair of English
and now to sponsor this workshop. |
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| UE Professor of English William
Baer and guest speaker Greg Williamson, a professor from
the Johns Hopkins University who teaches in the Writing
Seminars, lead this first workshop. Williamson has been
a staff member at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference
since its inception in 1989, and he is the author of two
collections of poetry: The Silent Partner, which
won the 1995 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Award; and Errors
in the Script, which was published in 2001 by Overlook
Press. His works have been widely published in such journals
as Poetry, The New Republic, and The
Yale Review. |
| Baer has a new book of poetry which will be published
fall 2003 titled "Borges" and Other Sonnets.
His previous collection, The Unfortunates, was
the recipient of the first T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry in
1997. Not only does Baer write his own poetry, but he's
published several other books including Elia Kazan:
Interviews; Conversations with Derek Walcot;
and his play The Amistad Case. He is also the founding
editor of The Formalist,
a journal of metrical poetry, which he started in 1990. |
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| The eight UE alumni invited to attend this
workshop were some of the University's most talented poets
during the past 15 years, Baer said. "Those invited
are former students who published poetry as undergraduates
and have the potential to keep doing so," McMullan
added. The workshop focused on individual poems the alumni
have written, publication, time management, and information
about conferences and upcoming contests. |
2004 Alumni Workshop for Drama
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Interview
with Alumnus Matt Smart about the Summer Writing Workshop
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