Kwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica, where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992 he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska. In Nebraska, a beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Dawes explores a theme constant in his work—the intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska’s discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall. With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant.
News, Media and Stories | Creative Writing
Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems will be released in October 2019 by Copper Canyon Press: The Dead Man, Marvin Bell’s brilliant poetic invention, is an overarching consciousness, alive and dead at once, defeating time. Mystical and anonymous, The Dead Man offers searing insight into the joys, as well as the catastrophes, of fluctuating cultural and political moments.
Creative writing major and basketball player Charli Elliott '19 will deliver a commencement address — then go on to Taiwan to teach English as a second language.
Only as the Day Is Long represents a brilliant, daring body of work from one of our boldest contemporary poets, known to bear compassionate and ruthless witness to the mundane.
The Department of English is pleased to announce the newest membership of Alpha Chi Omega, Pacific University's chapter of the internal Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society. The 2019 class includes 20 students in Anthropology, Biology, Chinese, Creative Writing, Editing & Publishing, English Literature, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Spanish, and Theatre majors and minors.
The Department of English is pleased to announce our 2019 program awards recognizing outstanding seniors as well as recipients of the Esther Evans, Irving Storey, and Steele memorial scholarships.
Five-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award and MFA Faculty member Pete Fromm joins Counterpoint Press to publish his forthcoming novel, A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do.
Guest speakers for the Master of Fine Arts in Writing June 2019 residency include Susan Choi, Peter Rock, Melanie Rae Thon and Paul Tran.
The Department of English is pleased to announce the winners of the Pacific University 2019 Writing Contests in the categories of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, literary analysis, and college writing.
The editors-in-chief of IJURCA: The International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities are pleased to announce the publication of two web issues, featuring original scholarship developed by undergraduates from across the globe.