1. Submit to the English Department Blog
2. Win a department Literary Prize
3. Go on an English travel learning course
4. Have dinner with a visiting writer
5. Read a professor’s published works
Submit your own Bucket List entries!
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Interview with Kiese Laymon by Symone Mann and Adrian Burr
Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. His writing has been featured in a plethora of major publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, ESPN The Magazine, Oxford American, and Ebony.…
Scholars of Sturges: Faith Wogan (’20) on The Writing Life
When it comes to writing I have always done things differently than what teachers say to do–start with characters, plot, theme, et cetera. I don’t always think before I start writing. Once I’ve got the beginning, I go until I find the middle and the end. My mind flows so fast and I get lost in my own world it’s like when I get absorbed in TV.…
English Major Bucket List: Madison Williams (’20)
Skydiving and bungee-jumping a little daunting? Check out the first installment of our English Major Bucket List for fun, rewarding, and non-life-threatening activities to enhance your English major or minor. Then submit your own Bucket List entries!
1. Submit to the Owl
2. Complete a Sturges puzzle
3.…
Maddie Marusek: I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon
This summer, I was strolling through the book section of the Costco near my house when a book titled I Was Anastasia caught my eye. I decided to buy the book, which was undoubtedly the best thing I have ever bought from Costco. Ariel Lawhon tells the story of Anastasia Romanav, the youngest daughter of the last Russain tsar, and her best known impersonator, Anna Anderson, compellingly enough to create the illusion of possibility that Anna is the real Anastasia.…
Faith Wogan: Why English?
The story of how I came to minor in English is very different than the story of my major. I had to try several different majors before I found the right one. I came to OWU to be a Biology teacher, but I soon realized college Biology wasn’t like high school Biology–it was very hard, and I was grossed out by everything in the lab.…
Abby Dockter (’12): How to Keep Writing After You Graduate
I don’t want to dwell on how terrified I was when I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2012, but I had a lot of fears. And I don’t want to parse out which ones were irrational, but I was really, really afraid that I would stop writing.
Leaving the environment where writing is due and workshops full of people read my work regularly, it was hard to imagine other writing communities.…
Madison Williams (’20): A Love Letter to Mystery Novels
Dear Mystery Novels,
I have missed you so much since our last meeting. My longing to be reunited with you only grows stronger each day, and I often find myself looking to our past for solace. It feels like only yesterday that I first laid eyes on you.
You appeared to me in the form of Encyclopedia Brown, and it was love at first clue.…
Erin Brady (’20): An Epic Adventure in Publishing
One of the things that attracted me to OWU was the Small Project Grants program that allows students to request funding for off-campus projects to do things related to their major. I was excited when I had the chance to apply for one to go to New York, but I was even more thrilled when I learned that I got it!…
Reports from the Field: Izzy Taylor (’18) on English and Professionalism
As I sit in my windowless, cinder block department office, I reflect on my first semester in a Master of Science program in Geography at Pennsylvania State University and of the ways in which my English minor from OWU has helped prepare me for my transition to graduate studies. While my time at Penn State has undoubtedly been an educational experience thus far, what strikes me most about the distinction between undergraduate and graduate studies is the professionalizing and bureaucratic processes central to grad school.…