We have discussed the 2020 annual conference, scheduled at Yale University from October 22-25, with the ALSCW Executive Committee and the Conference Committee, and regret to announce that we are postponing it for a year. We have asked the session leaders for the Yale conference if they could commit to October of 2021, and are pleased and grateful that many already have responded affirmatively. If you have submitted a proposal for the conference, we will keep it on hand for 2021. We plan to circulate the Call for Papers for the 2021 annual conference in early February, and hope to see you in New Haven in October of 2021 (the precise dates TBA).
Category: News
Winners of the 2019 ALSCW Meringoff Writing Awards
We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 ALSCW Meringoff Writing Awards!
Poetry: George David Clark, ‘Song of the Genie,’ ‘The Latch,’ and ‘Northern Lake”; Katie Peterson, “The Web”
George David Clark’s Reveille received the 2015 Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ecotone, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. His work has won awards from such journals as Southern Poetry Review, Narrative Magazine, and Pleiades, and his honors include the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Lily Postdoctoral Fellowship from Valparaiso University, and the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship from Colgate University. The editor of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College and lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife and their four young children.
ALSCW Call for Papers Update
Dear ALSCW members and friends,
We have had requests for more time to think about responses to the call for papers at the October conference at Yale University from October 22-25. In view of these, and given the unique pressures under which we’re all now working, we are postponing the deadline for proposed seminar papers to July 1.
Please know that we are moving forward with plans for October, and will continue to accept submissions, but there is serious uncertainty at this time about the likely duration of the mitigation and containment measures that universities, like all other responsible institutions, have been putting in place; and it seems possible that the pandemic will affect the planned dates for the 2020 conference. We will let you know as soon as we have any information about this.
2020 ALSCW Conference Call for Papers
The Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers will take place October 22nd to 25th at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Click here to download the 2020 Conference Call for Papers.
ALSCW DC: Mark Edmundson Lecture
ALSCW Lecture
“Can Literary Study Be Saved?”
Mark Edmundson, University of Virginia
March 25th, 2020
University of Maryland, College Park
2115 Tawes Hall, 3:30 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Mark Edmundson Is University Professor at the University of Virginia and the author of a dozen books, including Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals and The Heart of the Humanities: Reading, Writing Teaching. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Literary Imagination, Raritan, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The American Scholar, The American Scholar, Yale Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other venues. The National Endowment of the Humanities has honored him as a Distinguished Teaching Professor.
2019 Meringoff Writing Awards
The Meringoff Writing Awards have deadlines of January 15th, with the exception of the high school award, which has May 15th deadline. Everyone who enters the Meringoff Writing Awards competition must be a member of the ALSCW or sponsored by a member, with the exception of the high school award, which is open to any high school student. Membership information is available on the ALSCW website (alscw.org).
Meringoff Writing Awards (January 15th deadline)
Recent Talk by Carmen Bugan on Poetry and The Cold War
A recent talk by Carmen Bugan on the topic of poetry and the Cold War called “Why the Cold War still matters — Repression and dissent” can be found by clicking here.
NYC Local Event: Letters Written and Not Sent by William Louis-Dreyfus
ALSCW Symposium on Populism and the Arts
ALSCW Symposium on Populism and the Arts
August 16-18
Washington, DC
Catholic University
This symposium builds on one held in 2018 at the University of Goettingen on populism and poetry. It looks into questions about “the people” (das Volk) and about populist modes of politics (broadly construed) as they relate to poetry, fiction, drama, music, and other art forms. It follows two lines of inquiry.
The first concerns artists who have seen themselves as the voice of the people or of a people, as tribunes of some popular sentiment, feeling, grievance or aspiration, either as such or in relation to an alleged elite with which they are at odds. Such figures have appeared on both the political Left and the political Right.
Local Meeting: Poetry Reading by Elizabeth Spires, NYC, May 9
The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
invites you to a reading and conversation with
Elizabeth Spires
Thursday, May 9, 2019
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
The Culture Center
410 Columbus Avenue
(Between West 79th & West 80th Streets)
New York, NY 10024
Doors open at 6:15 pm | Reading begins at 7:00 pm
~ Refreshments before & after ~
Elizabeth Spires will read from her recent collection, A Memory of the Future,
and other new poems. A conversation will follow her reading.