January 4, 2021
Professor and Oscar Wilde biographer and scholar Nicholas Frankel has edited a new collection of short stories by Wilde . . .
October 14, 2020
Michelle Goshen is the 2020 Cabell First Novelist Fellow and in her third year in the M.F.A. program with a dual-genre concentration in fiction and poetry.
October 7, 2020
Michelle Dotter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Dzanc Books. Dzanc Books published John Englehardt's novel, Bloomland, which won the 2020 Cabell First Novelist Award.
September 24, 2020
Colin Bailes is the 2020 Levis Reading Prize coordinator and in his third year in the M.F.A. program for poetry.
August 26, 2020
MATX doctoral student Robb Crocker will be featured in a special live virtual event...
August 12, 2020
Please welcome our Fall 2020 incoming MATX/PhD class...
August 11, 2020
Please welcome our Fall 2020 incoming MFA class...
August 10, 2020
Please welcome our Fall 2020 incoming MA class...
August 3, 2020
Ilya Kaminsky is the winner of the 2020 Levis Reading Prize for his poetry collection, Deaf Republic...
July 31, 2020
When Michele Poulos and Professor Gregory Donovan teamed up to film the documentary, A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet, they shot hours of interviews with some of the most influential, revered poets in the United States...
July 13, 2020
MFA grad, Rachel Beanland, finds it surreal that the book she began working on in a novel writing workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University is now in publication...
June 29, 2020
John Englehardt has won the 2020 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, which honors an outstanding debut novel published during the preceding calendar year. His winning book, Bloomland, published by Dzanc Books, deftly tells the aftermath story of a shooting at a fictional southern university, following three characters and the larger community over two decades, and is told in a provocative, implicating second-person style point of view...
June 15, 2020
Current MATX PhD student, Robb Crocker, a former journalist who earned two journalism degrees from VCU is helping produce a podcast inspired by Professor David Coogan’s book, Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail...
June 8, 2020
When it came time to choosing a final research project for her master’s degree in English, Sara MacRae found inspiration in her job as a teacher at John Marshall High School...
April 24, 2020
Crystal Giannini received her B.A. in English in May of 2017. Crystal is currently teaching English 9, 10, and 11 at Dinwiddie High School where she loves being able to introduce texts to students in fun and engaging ways!
April 17, 2020
Gretchen Gales graduated with a B.A. in English and a minor in Creative Writing from VCU in December 2016. Gretchen is currently the executive editor of Quail Bell Magazine and a high school English teacher.
April 16, 2020
Mimi Winick, Ph.D., who was recently named a research associate for Harvard's Women's Studies in Religion Program for the 2020-21 academic year.
April 2, 2020
Like many of our colleagues, VCU English Professor Nicholas Frankel had limited experience with online learning prior to the COVID-19 crisis...
March 23, 2020
Jessica Sims is a senior English major and the recipient of the Black History in the Making Award for 2020. She’s a non-traditional student who loves reading, writing poetry and other forms of creative writing, loves music, enjoys trying her hand at photography, and loves “being the best single mom to a vivacious 9-year old that I can be.” She’s considering getting her masters so that she can be a teacher at the secondary level, but says “I will have to see what the future holds for me!”
March 5, 2020
Congratulations go out to Adin Lears, Ph.D., an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has been named a fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University for the 2020-21 academic year...
March 2, 2020
The Richmond and Qatar-based independent press Diode Editions is proud to announce the publication of Prismatics: Larry Levis & Contemporary American Poetry...
February 21, 2020
Chloe is a junior English major, creative writing minor at VCU. She currently works in the nonprofit world, advocating for childhood literacy and foster care/adoption. She plans to be a high school English teacher upon graduating.
February 17, 2020
Kathleen Graber's The River Twice (Princeton University Press) has won the 2020 UNT Rilke Prize...
February 7, 2020
Caitlin Wilson is the 2019-2020 lead associate editor of Blackbird: an online journal for literature and the arts and in her second year of the M.F.A. program for poetry.
February 5, 2020
“My literature classes prepared me for the business world more than anything. I draw from my English degree all the time. I’m absolutely convinced my liberal arts background has been a great point of leverage for me...”
January 31, 2020
Rachel graduated from VCU in December 2017 with her B.A. in English and double minors in business and nonprofit management.
November 6, 2019
Jenna Johnson is an Executive Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. While attending the 2019 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award event, she will participate on a panel about the process of publishing a debut novel, alongside her client Ling Ma, whose novel Severance won this year’s award.
December 11, 2019
Three undergraduate students presented the culmination of their two-semester creative and scholarly research projects...
November 22, 2019
Adin Lears is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and started at VCU in the fall of 2018. She teaches classes on medieval literature, Chaucer, and much more.
November 15, 2019
Matteo Pangallo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and started at VCU in the fall of 2017. He teaches classes on Shakespeare, early modern drama, book history, and theater history.
November 12, 2019
Patricia (Patty) Smith is the author of The Year of Needy Girls (Kaylie Jones Books, 2017). She received her M.F.A. at VCU in 2001 and teaches American literature and creative writing at the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School in Petersburg, VA.
November 6, 2019
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Ph.D., will give a special guest lecture.
November 1, 2019
Natalie Marie Salsbury graduated with a B.A. in English and a minor in Creative Writing from VCU in December 2018. She is the Administrative Specialist in the Dean's Office of College of Humanities and Sciences.
October 30, 2019
Jin Auh is a literary agent at The Wylie Agency. While attending the 2019 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award event, she will participate on a panel about the process of publishing a debut novel, alongside her client Ling Ma, whose novel Severance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) won this year’s award.
October 18, 2019
Dale Brumfield graduated from VCU with a B.F.A. in painting and printmaking in 1981 and graduated from the VCU M.F.A. program in Creative Writing in 2015. His tenth book has just been released.
September 30, 2019
September 20, 2019
April Sopkin is the 2019 Cabell First Novelist Award Fellow and in her third year of the M.F.A. program for fiction.
September 19, 2019
Joshua Eckhardt has authored a new book that examines the religious texts and books that surrounded the poems, sermons, and inscriptions of poet and preacher John Donne...
September 18, 2019
September 18, 2019
AJ White is the 2019 Levis Reading Prize coordinator and in his third year in the M.F.A. program for poetry.
September 16, 2019
Kathleen Graber, associate professor in the Department of English, has published a new collection of poems, The River Twice, (Princeton University Press, 2019)...
September 5, 2019
All VCU students, undergraduate and graduate, are invited to submit to the VCU Student Book-Collecting Contest...
September 5, 2019
Sonja Livingston has authored a new collection of essays, The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion (University of Nebraska Press)...
August 16, 2019
August 14, 2019
August 13, 2019
August 12, 2019
July 30, 2019
July 9, 2019
Jenny Xie is the winner of the 2019 Levis Reading Prize...
July 2, 2019
Ling Ma has won the 2019 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award...
April 15, 2019
April 12, 2019
March 26, 2019
March 20, 2019
March 7, 2019
January 31, 2019
Acclaimed author, Yiyun Li, who teaches creative writing at Princeton University, is VCU’s 2019 Distinguished Visiting Writer...
February 25, 2019
February 21, 2019
January 7, 2019
VCU News' latest student spotlight feature focuses on VCU English major, Glynis Boyd Hughes . . .
October 22, 2018
The Library of Virginia on Saturday announced the winners of the 21st annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards...
October 8, 2018
VCU English alum, X.C. Atkins, has just published his debut collection of short stories. Grace Street Alley and Other Stories ...
August 19, 2018
Please welcome our Fall 2018 incoming MA in English class...
August 19, 2018
Please welcome our Fall 2018 incoming MFA in Creative Writing class...
August 19, 2018
Please welcome our Fall 2018 incoming PhD in Media, Art and Text class...
July 13, 2018
Kaveh Akbar is the winner of the 2018 Levis Reading Prize for his poetry collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf...
May 28, 2018
PBS News Hour recently featured VCU English alum and prize-winning author Kevin Powers as a part of its Memorial Day coverage...
May 25, 2018
VCU MFA graduate Michele Young-Stone's latest novel, Lost in the Beehive follows a young woman growing up in the 1960s...
Blackbird journal logo: a stylized blackbird perched on the K of the word Blackbird overlaying the image of a photorealistic moon with a dark blue sky behind. The bird has a red berry in its beak the dot from the letter I in Blackbird. [View Image]
Learn more about Blackbird and internship opportunities for students
British Virginia is a VCU-hosted series of scholarly editions of documents touching on the colony. These texts range from the 16th and 17th-century literature of English exploration to the 19th-century writing of loyalists and other Virginians who continued to identify with Great Britain. Editions appear principally in digital form, freely downloadable. [View Image]