The Voice in My Head is God (Black Privilege/Penguin Random House), a debut memoir from Grammy-winning artist 2 Chainz cowritten with UWM professor and poet Derrick Harriell, debuted at number 10 on the Times’ Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction Bestseller list in March 2026.
Kim Rouse, who is pursuing an MA in English with a creative writing focus, recently won a Lillian Boese Award for Writing Excellence from the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. Congratuations, Kim!
Su Cho (PhD, 2021) and Canese Jarboe (PhD, 2024), have both been named 2025 NEA Fellows in Poetry and will receive grants of $25,000 each. Cho will join Vanderbilt University’s MFA program as an assistant professor in fall 2025; Jarboe …
Susan Kerns, Ph.D. in Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies at UWM, accomplished filmmaker, and scholar, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Chicago Feminist Film Festival, and recent Professor and Associate Provost for Faculty Research and Development at Columbia University, has been …
Poetry faculty emerita and alumna Brenda Cárdenas was named Wisconsin Poet Laureate in December, 2024. Her two-year term starts January 15, 2025. Her books include Trace (Red Hen Press) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press). In addition, she is the author or co-author of three chapbooks: Bread of the Earth/The Last …
Media, cinema, and digital studies PhD student David Kocik was a 2024 Research Fellow at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. His research is highlighted on the Museum’s website.
Media, cinema, and digital studies PhD student Jessica Hoover is the recipient of a James and Sylvia Thayer Research Fellowship from the UCLA Library Special Collections. Jess talks about her research into women TV comedy-variety performers like Carol Burnett and shares …
Creative Writing program alum Dr. Ching-In Chen (PhD, 2015) recently won a $50,000 fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. The award is part of a program that, in the words of the Academy, honors “laureates’ literary excellence while enabling them …
A special visitor made an appearance at the last department meeting of the semester: congratulations to Professor Lane Hall, current English Department Chair, who retires from UWM in August 2024, and our other retiring faculty members.
Writers from UWM’s undergraduate creative writing program recently took part in a crosstown reading with Marquette undergraduates. The event, part of an annual series, was hosted by Boswell Books. UWM participants included John Dewey, Noelle Gomez, Annaliese Kunst, and Abby Shroder.