Sewanee English Department

10/12/2026

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Please join us for a poetry reading and conversation with Laura Candler C'09 at 5 pm on Monday, Oct. 19th, in the Torian Room (2nd Floor of duPont Library). She will be reading from her newly published chapbook, Common Name. Associate Professor of Creative Writing Molly McCully Brown will join us for the discussion. Chapbooks will be available for purchase and signing.

09/29/2026

Check out and share this great video by Bobby Silk.

Learn more about English at Sewanee: https://new.sewanee.edu/programs-of-study/english/

07/02/2026

Seeking a versatile major? Forbes suggests English.

05/15/2026

Goodreads giveaway for Skin Contact, the debut novel by Elisa Faison (C'11):

Unmoored by her mother's sudden death, Frances has neve…

04/21/2026

Please come out today and support the Creative Writing Senior Majors as they read from their capstones in. It will take place at 6 PM in Convocation Hall, Tuesday, APRIL 21. Each person will read for about 5 minutes, so you can count on the reading lasting about an hour.

03/27/2026

Four great events this week! Thank you to Dr. David Haskell and Dr. Michael Pontacoloni for their fantastic and informative readings. Additionally, thanks to our graduating playwriting majors, Sofia Tripoli and Jacob Novem, for sharing such excellent works for our students!

And thank you everyone for attending — have a great weekend!

03/25/2026

Please join the Department of English and Creative Writing on Thursday, March 26th at 4:30pm in St. Luke’s Chapel as we welcome Dr. Michael Pontacoloni to Sewanee. Dr. Pontacoloni will be reading from his collection of poems Anadromous Fish of the Farmington River, an intriguing book which explores personal history, environmental degradation, and the serial murders that inspired Arsenic and Old Lace. Described as possessing, “language as fresh and clarion as the river it exalts,” Anadromous Fish of the Farmington River was selected by Maggie Millner as winner of the 2025 Quarterly West Chapbook Contest.

Dr. Michael Pontacoloni holds a PhD from The University of Mississippi and an MFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His poems have received support from the Vermont Studio Center and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and have won the Oran Robert Perry Burke Prize for outstanding work from The Southern Review. He is the Director of Creative Writing Pedagogy in the MFA program at Indiana University in Bloomington.

This event is conducted with support from the Department of English and Creative Writing and the Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fund.

02/02/2026

Seniors! Have any questions about the English comp? This Wednesday, February 4th at 7:00 pm, the English Department will be hosting a comp review session! Several professors will lead you through all important details, and there will be plenty of time for Q&A.

You can also find general information at: https://new.sewanee.edu/programs-of-study/english/resources/comprehensive-examination/

01/27/2026

We highly advise you keep scrolling through the slideshow.

“There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten—
If I ever read it.”

A Patch of Old Snow - Robert Frost

11/19/2025

TV and comic book writer, J Holtham, will be on campus for a talk, “THE WORLDS WE BUILD: writing dystopia and the supernatural” on Wednesday, Nov. 19th at 4:30pm in Naylor Auditorium. At 7:30, he will host a writing workshop which will focus on comic book writing in the Torian Room.

All are welcome.

J was a writer on THE HANDMAID’S TALE and SUPERGIRL, and he’s written for Marvel comics. He also just signed a deal for a new dystopian graphic novel series, THEY BLEED BLACK.