February 21, 2014
News Digest; Literary conference; Honor: Classics department
Writers to gather in Seattle for literary conference
Northwest writers Timothy Egan, Sherman Alexie and Gary Snyder will give public readings and University of Washington emeritus faculty members David Wagoner and Colleen McElroy will be honored by peers when the Association of Writers and Writing Programs visits Seattle for its 2014 conference, Feb. 26 to March 1.
It’s the largest literary conference in North America and was attended by 12,000 people in 2013. This year’s conference will be at the Washington State Convention Center and other locations. The UW English Department’s Creative Writing Program is a primary sponsor.
Public programs during the conference include readings by Alexie and Egan and conversations featuring Snyder and fiction writer Barry Lopez. Conference sessions will include tributes to McElroy and Wagoner.
In a conference session, UW Creative Writing Program faculty Andrew Feld, Linda Bierds, Richard Kenney, Pimone Triplett and Heather McHugh will read their own work, along with selected poems by former faculty members Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, William Matthews, Denise Levertov and Wagoner.
Classics department wins new award for professional equity
The UW classics department has received the first Award in Professional Equity from the Women’s Classical Caucus.
The award was established by the caucus to honor a department or larger institutional unit for policies and leadership in the area of professional equity, diversity development and workplace flexibility. The caucus, with 750 members, is the oldest and largest organization of its kind in the world.
Among other things, the Women’s Classical Caucus leadership cited the UW department’s gender fairness in procedures for faculty hiring and promotion and in the treatment of contingent faculty and students; its emphasis on recruiting and retaining a diverse population that includes sexual, ethnic and racial minorities; and its support for all genders in ways that respect their roles as parents, partners and spouses.
The award was presented last month during the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, the North American professional association for classical studies.
