Three Professors Receive Creative Arts Funding

Professors Maud Casey, Michael Collier and Howard Norman are among the winners of the 2008 Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) summer awards.

CAPA awards are bestowed annually to six or seven professors who demonstrate achievement and engagement in the arts. This marks the second year in a row that the department has been honored with three of the available awards. Department Chair Kent Cartwright says that this is testament to the "superb craftsmanship" of the department's creative writing faculty.

Assistant Professor Maud Casey will be using her award to support research necessary for her novel-in-progress, The Wanderer. Inspired by the case history of Albert Dadas, a psychiatric patient in late 19th-century Bordeaux, the novel will engage new modes of representing mental illness.

Professor Michael Collier's award will be put toward a collection of new poems tentatively entitled An Individual History. It will be Collier's fifth volume of poetry.

Professor Howard Norman will use his award to complete two works-in-progress. What Is Left the Daughter is a new novel that centers on World War II-era Nova Scotia. Child Ignored, Parent Ignored is a travel memoir of Norman's 2007 journey through Japan. Twenty pages of Norman's narrative appeared earlier this year in the February 2008 National Geographic. You can read a selection here.

To learn more about the CAPA Awards, click here.