CONWAY, Ark. (February 15, 2013) - Author Greg Brownderville will be the Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Writer for Maymester 2013 at Hendrix.
Greg Brownderville is the author of two books, a poetry collection titled Gust and a multi-genre book titled Deep Down in the Delta. Brownderville is an assistant professor of English at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. His poems have appeared in Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, Arkansas Review, and other publications.
At Hendrix, Brownderville will teach a three-week course titled Meaning Making in Contemporary American Poetry, a combination of literary analysis from a practitioner's perspective and poetry workshop. Analyzing an array of contemporary American poems, the course will tackle questions such as: How is poetic meaning made? How do poets embody or perform thought and feeling in their work? What aesthetic strategies are in play? How might a given poem have grown from its initial conception?
Brownderville worked with Hendrix faculty and students in May 2012 on a two-week interdisciplinary project related to the Buffalo River and assisted students as they created responses to their time on the river.
"Students reacted so favorably to their experience with Brownderville that we thought him the perfect candidate for Maymester 2013," said Dr. Tyrone Jaeger, creative writing professor in the Department of English Studies, which is coordinating Brownderville's return to campus with the support of the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language.
In spring 2014, Trenton Lee Stewart, a 1992 Hendrix graduate, will be the Hendrix-Murphy Visiting Writer. Steward is the author of the novel Flood Summer and the best-selling Mysterious Benedict Society series.
At his alma mater, Stewart will teach a course titled Writing and Publishing Fiction. The course will focus principally on the craft of fiction writing, with directed exercises, informal lecture and discussion, and workshop-style critique. It will also explore the various traditional and developing venues for literary fiction - from print and online literary journals to high-circulation magazines for short stories, from large commercial publishing houses to independent publishers and university presses for books - and the processes by which a literary work makes its way from manuscript to publication. The class will investigate the potential role in a fiction writer's life of creative writing programs, literary agents, and editors, as well as the significant personal and practical questions for which dedicated writers are compelled to seek answers: How does one make a writing life? What constitutes a readership, and does it matter? Why or why not? And why does one write at all?
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the fifth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country's "Up and Coming" liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report. Hendrix is featured in the 2012 edition of the Princeton Review as one of the country's best 377 colleges, the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, Forbes magazine's annual list of America's Top 650 Colleges, and the 2013 edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.