SDSU Department of English & Comparative Literature

Shout out to Professor Bill Nericcio who was featured in Pulitzer nominated LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano's newsletter!

Gustavo Arellano's Weekly, Canto CDLXI: William Nericcio, Spicy Solon of San Diego! On the San Diego State professorial genius

ICYMI: Congratulations to our various department award winners! 👏👏👏👏👏

Outstanding Graduating Senior: Amber Worden
Most Influential Faculty: Professor Joseph T. Thomas, Jr.
Outstanding Graduating MA Student: Coco Rosales
Outstanding Graduating MFA Student: Sam Yaziji

Outstanding Critical and Creative Work Awards ✍️💻🖼️
Creative or Digital Project: Raine
Poetry: Sam Yaziji
Fiction: Ben Bird
Graduate essay: Coco Rosales
Undergraduate essay: Ashley Sims

Congratulations to ECL Professor Lashon Daley and TFF Professor Dani Bedau for their successful class collaboration, "Adapting Girlhood: Taking 'Merci Suarez' from the Page to the Stage."

This unprecedented collaboration brought ECL 502 (Adolescence in Children's Literature) students and THEA 510 (Creative Drama and Language Arts) students together to devise three vignettes based on the Newbery-winning novel, "Merci Suarez Changes Gears" by Meg Medina.

Students had the opportunity to meet Meg Medina during a Zoom call earlier in the semester.

The dramatic reading was performed in the Digital Humanities Center and included a brief talkback featuring the student actors, dramaturgs, and designers.

Congratulations to Professor Tishna Asim and the Honors Students who presented their pieces last week: there were stories about twins, memoirs about troubled relationships, critical analyses of the use of "propagation" in Frankenstein and the tagging system for fan fiction, and excerpts from fantastical novels. The range of work was a real testament to the dynamic offerings available in our classes.

Congratulations to Professor Jessica Pressman, Professor Lashon Daley, and the ECL students who participated in the Digital Humanities showcase on Friday morning, May 8. The works highlighted the crucial role that humanities scholarship should play in our engagement with emergent technologies.

Congratulations to Em Teaze, MFA student, who won this year’s e-lit competition and to Luca DaVersa, undergraduate ECL student, who received an honorable mention!

Congratulations to Sara Canelon (left), Joseph Galvan (center), and Coco Rosales (right) for completing their Advanced Certificate in Children’s/Adolescent Literature!

The Advanced Certificate in Children’s/Adolescent Literature is a graduate-level certificate program focused on supporting emerging children's literature scholars. For more information about our children's literature program, visit childlit.sdsu.edu.

Celebrate the 2026 MFA Poetry Graduates at a special reading on Friday, May 15, 7:00–9:30 p.m. in Scripps Cottage. We encourage all MFA students to attend and support your classmates on this accomplishment!

Celebrate the 2026 MFA Fiction Graduates at a special reading on Friday, May 8, 7:00–9:30 p.m. in Scripps Cottage. We encourage all MFA students to attend and support your classmates on this accomplishment!

Mark your calendars! The next Living Writers Series, featuring Blas Falconer, will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29 in LL-430!

Blas Falconer will share poems from his newest book, "Rara Avis." Of the collection, Oliver de la Paz raves, “Falconer’s tender and wise poems are gentle reminders that we move forward because we are called to those we love. We move forward because we see in the periphery, the past still holds us in its care.”

Blas Falconer is the author of "Rara Avis" (Four Way Books 2024), winner of the Thom Gunn Award; "Forgive the Body This Failure" (Four Way Books, 2018); "The Foundling Wheel" (Four Way Books, 2012); "A Question of Gravity and Light" (University of Arizona Press, 2007); and "The Perfect Hour" (Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press, 2006). He is also a co-editor for "The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity" (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and "Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets" (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Falconer’s awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry, and the Barthelme Fellowship. He teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of Poetry International Online.