The OWU English Department Blog
Recommended by Professor Long
During the semester I don’t have the long-term memory for novels, so I tend to read nonfiction for pleasure, and my greatest non-literary pleasure is music. This book by Jack Hamilton examines the period of popular music I am listening to the most right now (1960s rock, pop, and soul), with an emphasis on collaboration and musical inspiration between black and white artists.…
I’m now an editor at America’s Test Kitchen. It’s a dream come true for a writer who likes to cook. Although I spend about half of my time in the kitchen, no day goes by that I am not grateful for my time in the English department. ATK is very collegial and each piece of writing goes through a rigorous editing process.…
Recommended by Professor Hipsky
This sci-fi classic appeals to the pimply-faced sixteen-year-old nerd in me. Set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, it chronicles the existential angst of organic androids who are treated as chattel, and rise up against their makers. Both an action-packed detective story and a philosophical exploration of what it means to be human, the novel was adapted into the cult film Blade Runner, together with which it stands as “exhibit A” in the gallery of postmodernity.…
What did you do after graduation?
I went to graduate school for my MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham University.
What are you up to now?
I’m working as an Event Coordinator for a non-profit and I freelance write and edit.
How has being an English major helped you in your postgraduate career(s), or just in life in general?…
Recommended by Professor Comorau
I picked up Trevor Noah’s memoir expecting a light read. What I discovered was a series of episodes in which Noah traces a life in and through South Africa’s complicated political, legal, and social imaginations of race. Noah retains the warmth and sense of humor that he displays on The Daily Show while working to pick apart the absurdities of the constructions of race in South Africa and the horrors of Apartheid and violence around him.…
Recommended by Professor Butcher
Over the winter break, I found myself absolutely engrossed in J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir that meditates on Vance’s early life within a poor, isolated Appalachian town, one of many that dot the areas directly south and east of us. Part personal narrative and part social critique, Vance’s book considers the implications of class and legacy as they relate to political ideology, and how—in failing to achieve the American dream, a dream many Americans feel was promised to them—a large swath of this nation has come to feel cheated, ignored, and abandoned.…
Recommended by Professor Carpenter
A young woman is sent by her publisher boss to “mind” a reclusive, eccentric novelist who finally appears on the verge of producing a second novel years after her first grand success (think Harper Lee), only to find herself minding the brilliant, quirky, needy 10-year-old Frank instead.…
Favorite Authors, Genres, Periods, Interests?
I love Utopian novels or anything from the Victorian era.
What do you like most about being an English major?
The English department has given me so many opportunities to grow as a student academically and in my personal life as well. I have also become so much more confident in my writing through the courses here.…
What did you do after graduation?
I did a communications internship at Lakeside Chautauqua in Lakeside, Ohio before moving to New York City to work as a reporter for Blank Slate Media, a group of weekly community newspapers in the Long Island suburbs.
What are you up to now?
I recently accepted a position as a New York City reporter for Patch, a nationwide publisher of hyperlocal news sites.…
Recommended by Professor Musser
Cathy O’ Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy warns us that the pervasive use of large collections of data can be dangerous. O’Neil, with a Ph.D. in mathematics (“algebraic number theory”), has taught at Barnard, and also has worked at a hedge fund (as a “quant”) and at an e-commerce start-up.…
