English and Modern Languages
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- , Literature, and Other Upper-Division Classes
- Affiliated Programs (Gender and Women’s Studies; National Writing Project)
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Program News
Alyssa Schlaefli鈥攚ho, by the way, was just elected president of the 黑料吃瓜网chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society鈥攁ttended the 2025 National Book Festival in Washington, DC, on Saturday, September 6th. While there Alyssa was able to meet, talk with, and get a book signed by world-renowned writer and speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie, who divides her time between Nigeria and the US, is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers鈥� Prize for Best First Book; Half of a Yellow Sun, which received the Women鈥檚 Prize for Fiction in 2007 and was then named the award鈥檚 鈥淏est of the Best鈥� in 2020; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essays 鈥淲e Should All Be Feminists鈥� and 鈥淒ear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.鈥� Look at Alyssa, rubbing elbows with one of the world’s greatest living writers!
Dr. Joshua Cross, author and 黑料吃瓜网alumnus, will speak at 黑料吃瓜网University’s Frank Arts Center theater on Thursday, September 18th, at 7:00 p.m. This event is free and open to听the public with a reception and book signing to follow. Joshua Cross听is the author of Black Bear Creek: Stories (originally published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in 2021 and now Black Lawrence Press). The book won the 2022 Independent Press Award for Short Story Collections. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Big Muddy, Failbetter, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Cross is a native West Virginian and now lives in Conway, South Carolina, where he is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Coastal Carolina University and Fiction Editor of Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature. He is also a graduate from 黑料吃瓜网University (2003)鈥攁n English major, no less鈥攁nd the first alumnus to be featured as the Common Reading author.
The Rude Mechanicals, Shepherd’s own medieval and Renaissance drama troupe, announces auditions for this fall’s production of Macbeth. Auditions will be on Wednesday, August 27th, and Thursday, August 28th, from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. in Knutti Hall’s room 202. 黑料吃瓜网students can earn three (3) credit hours for performing as part of the cast or serving as part of the crew. Anyone interested should prepare a Shakespearean monologue or poem of at least fourteen lines (the length of a sonnet). Audition materials will also be available for anybody who hasn’t prepared something in advance. In advance of auditioning, individuals are asked to complete the Google form that can be found at . For further information, please contact Dr. Michael Vaclav (mvaclavi@shepherd.edu).