The Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes Graham Foust

Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work. This week, the series welcomes poet Graham Foust. Foust is the author of several collections of poetry, including As in Every Deafness (2003); Leave the Room to Itself (2003), which won the Sawtooth Poetry Prize; Necessary Stranger (2007);...

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From Walden to Winnie

Kathryn Aalto (Cal English, ‘92) is the best-selling author of The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (Timber Press), described by the Washington Post as a “lovely book” that “provides two great pleasures: a visit to the actual wild spots that inform the fictional Pooh world and a chance to slip into...

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Professor Namwali Serpell on PBS News Hour’s “Brief but Spectacular”

“You might be wondering why a Zambian citizen and a resident alien of the United States is teaching you the history of American literature, but who better than an outsider to teach you about American literature?”  Professor Namwali Serpell was recently on PBS News Hour’s “Brief but Spectacular” series to talk about belonging, identity, and her personal experience as an...

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PhD Student Ismail Muhammad publishes two essays on James Baldwin

Though he passed away in 1987, the writer James Baldwin is still very much with us — as a theorist of “intersectionality” well before it became a watchword in the Black Lives Matter movement, and now as the subject of Raoul Peck’s much-admired film I Am Not Your Negro. Over the past few weeks, PhD student Ismail Muhammad has published...

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An excerpt from Christine Hyung-Oak Lee’s (BA ’95) memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life

On New Year’s Eve 2007, when she was 33 years old, Christine Hyung-Oak Lee (BA ’95) suffered a stroke that turned her field of vision upside-down and left her unable to form a coherent sentence. She has just published a witty and sharply observant account of her life before and after that moment: Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The...

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The Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes Simone White

Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work. This week, the series welcomes poet Simone White. White is the author of the full-length collections House Envy of All the World (2010) and Of Being Dispersed (2016), as well as the chapbooks Dolly (2008) and Unrest (2013). She has...

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Why We Trust George Orwell: An excerpt from Alex Zwerdling’s The Rise of The Memoir (2016)

The Presidency of Donald Trump, and his wielding of the cudgel of ‘fake news’ against media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, has led many to revisit George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, in which a “Truth Ministry” invents its own repertoire of facts. In the week after Trump’s inauguration, Orwell’s 1949 novel shot to...

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Professor Kathleen Donegan awarded Honorable Mention for 2016 Early American Book Prize

Earlier this month, The University of Notre Dame announced Professor Kathleen Donegan was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2016 Early American Literature Book Prize for her book, Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America.  According to a press release by Notre Dame, it was “noted by the committee (that,) ‘Donegan’s work is by turns troubling, provocative, and persuasive. Her...

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EUA’s Humans of English: Michael Jeong

When it comes to undergraduate students in the English Department, The English Undergraduate Association is a community touchstone for one of the largest departments in the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley. Since 1993, the English Undergraduate Association has hosted activities, provided opportunities to network, and helped English majors connect with one another. In this spirit, we have created a new...

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Robert Hass and Amanda Su interview author Shawna Yang Ryan

Earlier last year, alumni and author Shawna Yang Ryan (’98) published her second novel, Green Island, an exploration of immigration and 1940’s authoritarian rule in China through the narrative of one girl force to flee with her family to California after the The February 28 Incident in Taiwan. Recently, Professor Robert Hass and graduate student Amanda Su sat down with Ryan to discuss her writing process, her time at...

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EUA’s Humans of English: Taylor Follett

When it comes to undergraduate students in the English Department, The English Undergraduate Association is a community touchstone for one of the largest departments in the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley. Since 1993, the English Undergraduate Association has hosted activities, provided opportunities to network, and helped English majors connect with one another. In this spirit, we have created a new...

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English welcomes Ianna Owen, 2016 President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient

In 1984, in an effort to encourage exceptional women and minority Ph.D recipients to continue their academic careers at the University of California, The UC System created the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal...

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Holloway Poetry Series Welcomes Gary Snyder

Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work. This week, the series welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder.  A member of the Beat Generation and a prolific environmental poet, Gary Snyder is one of the most lauded poets of his generation.  A member of the...

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Holloway Poetry Series Welcomes Tonya Foster

Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work. This week, the series welcomes Bay Area poet Tonya Foster. Tonya Foster teaches at the California College for the Arts in San Francisco.  Her book, A Swarm of Bees in High Court, was published last year....

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