What’s English Epilogue?
English Epilogue is a monthly CSU English community newsletter. Here, you can catch up on department news, faculty and student achievements, upcoming events, opportunities, and highlights from across our vibrant English community.
Applause & Happenings
From recent publications to conference presentations and life updates, discover what our English faculty, staff, and students have been up to!
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Jake Friedman (MFA ’25) was recently interviewed by KRFC 88.9 FM and the Lip Chicken Poetry Podcast about his role as Fort Collins Co-Poet Laureate.
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Bryce M. O’Tierney is a member of the leadership team of The Realm, a Fort Collins multidisciplinary arts collective that recently announced its 2026-27 season. Bryce will be a featured violinist and poet at the March event, “Transforming: Seasons of Self.”
CALYX Vol. 36:1, which includes Bryce’s prize-winning essay, “Concerto” (selected by Julia Alvarez), will be released in print this October. A preview of the issue is available online.
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Sandra Saco received an Honorable Mention for the 2026 Promising Researcher Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Committee on Research for her manuscript, “It’s Not Just a Book: Cultivating Spaces of Acompañamiento within Latinx Book Clubs.”
Reviewers commended her scholarship “for its rich exploration of and careful attention to the solidarity Latinx youth build with one another in book club discussion, with culturally authentic literature as the catalyst.” Sandra will be recognized at the NCTE Annual Convention in Philadelphia this November.
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Sarah Mullens (MFA ’26) won the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest in nonfiction for her essay, “The Incompleteness Theorem,” judged by Melissa Febos.
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Bel Mercado (MFA ’26) will have her essay, “Magpie,” published in an upcoming issue of New England Review.
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Erika Szymanski presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in Kraków in September. Her presentation focused on developing a mixed qualitative-computational topic-modeling approach to identify how “the microbiome” appears in scientific literature about microbial communities.
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Nina McConigley read at the Zalaznick Reading Series at Cornell University in September. She was also one of the headliners of the Ithaca Is Books Festival and was featured at the Jackson Hole Book Festival.
On September 30, she participated in Reading Den in Denver alongside fellow CSU-ers Ramona Ausubel and EJ Levy.
This month, she has a new essay forthcoming in High Country News.
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slp’s musical project, maudlyn monroe, will perform folk, punk, and singer-songwriter work on Saturday, Oct. 3 at Denver PorchFest and on Friday, Oct. 23 at The Love Shack in Loveland (it’s punk night!).
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Harrison Candelaria Fletcher’s image-text essay, “Excavation,” has been selected for The Best of Tupelo Quarterly Vol. II, which will consist of poetry, prose, and hybrid texts in conversation.
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Sarah Cooper has a new article out, “Building Curiosity: Students in University Archives” in the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics.
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Matthew Cooperman recently co-led a Poetry and Philosophy hike with Ken Shockley at the CSU Mountain Campus. Poems from a new series, “Capitals & Cranes,” are currently featured in Crayfish Magazine and Another Chicago Magazine. His ninth poetry collection, Time, & Its Monument, was recently published by Station Hill Press.
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Samuel Ellington is presenting his paper “The Fractal and the Fern: Metaphor and Modular Congruence in Mathematico-Poetry” on the Literature and Science Panel at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s 2026 convention in Ogden, Utah.
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Aliza Anderson-Diepenbrock is presenting her paper “Bidirectional Shaping: Ecopoetry and the Anthropocene, Content and Form” on the Literature and Science Panel at the Rocky Mountain Language Association’s 2026 convention in Ogden, Utah.
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Lastly, a note of gratitude from colleague Doug Cloud:
Dear English Community,
I write to share sad news. Many of you met my dad, Steve Cloud, over the years. He loved to visit Colorado, deeply valued learning, and always enjoyed socializing with English folks. He passed peacefully last week after a brief time in hospice. Thanks to swift action by department leadership, colleagues, and our graduate students, I was able to hop on a plane and get to Ohio in time to say goodbye. I’m extremely grateful. I will be back with you all in October, but first I need to assist my family here during this difficult time. Dad often lamented not having a college degree. I explained to him many times that the life of the mind doesn’t require a degree. I don’t think he ever fully believed me, but he was a scholar. Anyone can be.
Doug
Announcement
C.A.N.S. Around
The Oval
C.A.N.S. Around The Oval is a 40-year-old CSU tradition, occurring mid-September to mid-October, and is geared toward raising awareness about food insecurity and collecting food and funds for the Food Bank for Larimer County, and by extension, Rams Against Hunger + Basic Needs at CSU.
For those who would like to drop off nonperishable items, the Department of English collection box is now available at the front desk in Eddy 359!
To make a financial donation to the Food Bank for Larimer County, click the link below. (Every $1 donated equals 2 meals!). Show your support by Weds. Oct. 14.
Upcoming Events
Plus!
- Oct. 3, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. at Civic Center Park in Old Town – On behalf of the Community Literacy Center and Literacy through Prose & Poetry, Devon Fulford and Jenny Albright will be joining the Sci on the Fly van at Tour de Corgi, where they’ll be helping attendees pen dog-inspired haikus from their pups’ perspective! Come say hi!
- Oct. 12, 3-5:30 p.m. in LSC Theatre – The All-College Meeting will be here soon! If you haven’t already, take a minute to RSVP by Friday, October 2. There will be food & drink and a conversation led by Dean Thorson about strategizing toward the future.
- Oct. 22, 4-7 p.m. at Verboten – Our second salon of the year! Salons are where we discuss our intellectual and artistic obsessions and how we’re turning those into words on the page or otherwise out in the world. We’ll hold our next salon on Wednesday, Nov. 18.
- Nov. 17, 4-5 p.m. (location TBD!) – Save the date! Dr. Barbara Sebek will be giving the Literature Program’s Research Spotlight Talk this semester on “Reimagining Medea, With and Without Shakespeare.” This talk explores a model of literary adaptation and appropriation that accommodates putting Luis Alfaro’s character Medea (from Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, 2013) into an adaptational “rhizome” with William Shakespeare’s character Miranda (from The Tempest, 1611).
News Center
English Education professor and Fulbright scholar Naitnaphit Limlamai teaches and learns across Norway
As a Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway, Naitnaphit Limlamai expected to learn about another country’s educational system, history, and culture. Along the way, she gained new insights into teaching, cultural identity, and what it means to be American.
Open Calls for Submissions
NoCo Press, a journal of short stories, is calling for submissions. They’re seeking fiction, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, and micro essays up to 5,000 words. The submission deadline is October 16th. Interested writers can email their work to info@NoCoPress.com or visit their website for full guidelines.
The Los Angeles Poetry Prize welcomes poets to submit poems for consideration during the open reading period, which closes January 1, 2027. The selected poet will receive a $1,000 prize and read their poem before a live audience in Los Angeles, California. The prize is judged by poet José Hernández Díaz.
Department
Delights
In case you missed it! Our very own Sarah Perry was named a finalist for the 2026 Colorado Book Award in General Nonfiction for Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, and was celebrated at a ceremony last weekend in Denver!
Former Visiting Assistant Professor Vauhini Vara and Professor and Chair of History Robert Gudmestad were also honored at the event for their books. Congrats to all!
