Fall News from PWP

Nabila Hijazi and Douglas Kern, presented Bridging Relationships: Creating Connections Among Diverse Communities for the 2015 Capital Area Peer Tutoring Association (CAPTA) Conference at George Mason University in October.

At the International Writing Centers Association conference in Pittsburgh, PA (Oct. 8-11), Writing Center Assistant Director Nabila Hijazi presented on a panel, “Consultant Training and Supporting New Graduate Writers: New Challenges.”  Director Leigh Ryan presented with two former tutors, Lena Stypeck, who teaches English at Baltimore’s Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy, and Abby Shantzis, now a graduate student in Higher Administration at UMD’s College of Education. They presented a panel entitled “Can Everyone Say Community?: Teachers/Students/Administrators/Mentors Collaborate to Establish an Inner-City  Baltimore High School Writing Center.”

Joan Mooney reviewed an optimistic book about sustainable projects for Urban Land magazine.

Martha Thomas interviewed Forrest Pritchard, author of Growing Tomorrow: A Farm-to-Table Journey in Photos and Recipes, at the Health and Wellness stage at the Baltimore Book Festival on Sept. 26.

Ann Bracken was a featured participant in two events in Baltimore for New Day Campaign, a series of art and informational events focused on reducing the stigma around treatment for mental illness and addiction. "Reading, Writing, and Healing" took place on November 19. In conjunction with the exhibition “Art Therapy,” Ann, along with fellow writers Fred Foote and Alonzo LaMont, shared from their work and reflected with the audience on the healing aspects of reading and writing. Then, on Dece. 1, in conjunction with the exhibition "Art & the Receptive Mind," Ann discussed her memoir in verse, The Altar of Innocence, a personal glimpse into a secret world of alcoholism and depression so many still inhabit today.

Stewart Foehl has had his next book accepted for publication. The novel, Stealing Candy, which will be published (under the pen name Stewart Lewis) by Sourcebooks in April 2017, concerns the daughter of a hair-metal rock star who is abducted from her boarding school.

Alexandra Calloway appeared as a guest lecturer at the U.S. Naval Academy on Nov. 23. Alexandra spoke to a freshman English class about the virtues of professional writing.

Danuta Hinc presented a paper at the 2015 South Central MLA Annual Conference in Nashville in Oct. The paper, “The Limits of Losing: The Silence in the Second Language,” discussed Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, Herta Müller's The King Bows and Kills, and Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory.  The paper explored what it means to live on the peripheries of history, political systems, and language, and the spaces we inhabit to preserve our identity. From the perspectives of those three memoirs, the paper focused on survival through metaphors and memories and defined multiple approaches to how identity can shift between the personal and the popular, between language and silence, between the sacred and the forbidden.

David Todd reports that the Jesse Ball duPont Fund recently awarded a technology grant based on an application he wrote for a Southwest D.C. church active in racial justice and community service.