Meet Alison Ng Hays, English Graduate Student

English Department graduate student Tara Ng Hays completed her degree here at Belmont in 2011, majoring in Liberal Studies. She was born in the Bay Area of Califonia but moved to Nashville at the age of eighteen. Tara currently lives in Spring Hill with her husband Matt, daughter Aria, son Axle, and dog Chloe. Tara loves creative writing and is pursing the Writing Track in the graduate program. Her favorite things to write are children’s books, creative pieces, and text messages. When she completes her degree at Belmont, her dream job is “to be a travel journalist who writes about places and food.” But she’ll also be happy with “being an English teacher.” Some of her favorite books include: Game of Thrones, The Help, The Twilight saga, dystopian literature, and “all great children’s books.”

Tara chose to enroll in the English Graduate Program because she really enjoyed her experience at Belmont during her undergrad years. She wasn’t interested in a completely on-line Master’s program and needed evening classes—so Belmont was a perfect fit. So far, her favorite things about Belmont are the friends she's made as well as "Belmont's awesome professors." If you see Tara, please welcome her back to Belmont as part of the English Graduate Program.

- Profile by Misty Wellman.

English Faculty Present at Service-Learning Summit

English Department faculty members, Dr. Charmion Gustke (pictured at left) and Dr. Jason Lovvorn, recently delivered a panel presentation entitled “Transforming Voices through Service Learning: Personal Narrative, Community Partnership, and Student Citizenship” at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement in Higher Education, held March 21-23 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Gustke and Lovvorn discussed ways in which they and fellow faculty member Dr. Linda Holt (English) incorporate service learning and writing into their classes. Their community outreach involves partnerships with Dismas House Nashville (Gustke), Carter-Lawrence Elementary School (Holt), and Nashville Adult Literacy Council (Lovvorn).

Belmont English Club at Family Literacy Day

Members of the Belmont English Club recently participated in Family Literacy Day, an annual event that promotes reading engagement for Nashville elementary students and their families. The focus of the event involves Reading Circles hosted by various groups. This year, the English Club hosted circles with a wide variety of themes: camping & outdoors, school, animals, monsters & dinosaurs, seasons, and Dr. Seuss. Counting Belmont English majors and minors, along with their friends, the English Club engaged over forty volunteers at this year's Family Literacy Day.

Part III of Spring Lecture Series

The English Club announces its third installment of the Spring Lecture Series. Tomorrow, March 16, from 10 to 10:50 a.m. in Beaman A&B, Dr. Gary McDowell will deliver a talk titled "Exploratory Poetry: The Syntax of Disjunction and Juxtaposition" (Culture & Arts convo credit offered). Dr. McDowell will offer a poetry reading and comment upon and illustrate contemporary exploratory poetry’s leanings toward disjunction, disruption, association, and juxtaposition. Whether it’s through syntax, content, or a combination of the two, exploratory poems, as McDowell puts it, “do not aspire to be comfortable or comforting;” instead they wish to “stretch the boundaries of the sayable.”

Dr. McDowell is an Assistant Professor of English at Belmont who specializes in creative Writing and contemporary American poetics. He is a widely published poet and critic. His first full-length book of poetry, American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), won the 2009 Orphic Prize for poetry, and he's the author of two previous volumes of poetry, Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005) and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009). He's also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010).

Meet Allison Belt

A profile of one of the newest members of the English Graduate Program, by Misty Wellman.

Allison, AKA Ping-pong Extraordinaire, completed her undergraduate work at Wheaton College, majoring in Sociology and English. She was born in Murfreesboro, TN, but in adulthood meandered up to Chicago, where she lived for six years and passed her time delivering babies.

She currently lives in Murfreesboro, which she proudly states “used to be the capital of Tennessee,” on a plot of ground measuring over an acre. She uses the space to raise “various vegetables, raspberries, peaches and a few pears – but no partridges.” She shares her abundant crops with “deer, fox, possums and tree rabbits” (your guess as to what those are, is as good as ours). She shares her home with cats and asks that we not hold that tidbit of information against her.

The Writing Track is her chosen path in the English program. She prefers to write creative nonfiction about gardening, birth, animals and “other filthy, wonderful things.” Lucille Clifton is her favorite anything, ever. But, she also enjoys reading Mary Oliver, Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, and Claude McKay among others.

Allison is currently a principal and teacher at a rural Rutherford County college-prep high school. She says she’s “very good at giving stern looks, infusing her voice with disappointment and humbling all the male students at ping-pong.” She enrolled at Belmont because “she enjoys stories, the hearing and telling of them, and one day hopes to obliterate the Oxford comma.”

Please join us in welcoming Allison to Belmont and the English Graduate Program!

Stover Speaks!

The English Club proudly announces its second speaker in the Spring Lecture Series, a set of events designed for students, particularly English majors/minors, to see faculty's work beyond the classroom. On Friday, February 24, Dr. Andrea Stover will deliver her talk, "(Not) Fade Away: Writing the Self Through Time." Dr. Stover will discuss the benefits associated with articulating the self in a diary over time and how it provides relative comfort and a sense of authenticity for some writers, while it causes anxiety and a sense of duplicity in others. The event will run from 10:00-10:50 a.m. in 114 McWhorter Hall, and Personal/Professional Growth convo will be available. Mark your calendars now, and come out to hear Dr. Stover's engaging presentation!

Feeling Critical?

Matt Colbeck, Matt Jones, and Alex Everett are three students at the University of Sheffield who have recently established a new user-generated review site for the creative arts. The site, www.21words.net, encourages writers to post their insights about a variety of creative genres. The creators are interested in building a solid review base for films, books, music, television and games. They feel that undergraduate and graduate arts students are "best placed to provide consistent content as they are at the rockface of emerging and existing creative output." Interested in contributing? Just click the link above, sign up, and get busy reviewing. Submissions do have a strict word limit. Viva la Reviewlution!