English Dept GWU

PhD student Ananya Bhardwaj is examining this beautiful folio of the Timurnama in India over the winter break, 2024. Read her story.

https://gwenglish.org/the-book-of-timur-in-india/

Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Kat Chow read from her memoir, Seeing Ghosts at George Washington University.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan read from her new novel, Big Girl, for the Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series at George Washington University.

Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Kat Chow read from her memoir, Seeing Ghosts at George Washington University. Here she is on the left, next to Rosemary Moore, daughter of Jenny McKean Moore, Jeff Kampelman, Board Member of the Jenny McKean Moore Board of Directors, and Cutter Wood, former Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington.

This Spring 2025, GWU's English Department is pleased to offer a Jenny McKean Moore Creative Nonfiction Community Workshop with Kat Chow, a journalist and the author of Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir, named a Notable Book by The New York Times. Every other year, the Jenny McKean Moore Community Workshops offer students in the D.C. area an opportunity to participate in a free, semester-long writing workshop taught by the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington.


Bio: Kat Chow is a reporter and writer, and the author of Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir (Grand Central Publishing). She was a reporter at NPR, where she was a founding member of the Code Switch team and podcast. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, New York Magazine’s The Cut and on Radiolab, among others. She's a contributor to Pop Culture Happy Hour and Slate’s Culture Gabfest, and has hosted Slate’s The Waves. She’s received residency fellowships from Storyknife, Millay Arts and the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. She has led classes and spoken about her reporting in Amsterdam, Calgary, Karachi, Minneapolis, Louisville, Boston, Seattle and many other places. She was appointed George Washington University’s 2024-2025 Jenny McKean Moore Writer-In-Washington professorship.



About the class: How do we shape our lived experiences into thought-provoking and insightful stories with clear narratives? How do we take the personal and make it universal? In this generative creative nonfiction workshop, we’ll read writers including Alexander Chee, Helen Macdonald, T Kira Madden, Patricia Lockwood and Aisha Sabatini Sloan, analyzing their use of form, dialogue, imagery and other craft elements. Students will be expected to write their own creative nonfiction based off of prompts; they will receive in-depth feedback from the instructor as well as from their peers. Feedback will be exchanged in both written and workshop (verbal) formats. This class is meant to help students develop their Creative Nonfiction writing voices, and also find community with other local writers.

Dates: Classes will meet in-person on GWU's campus in Washington, D.C..

Tuesdays from 6-8 p.m.: 1/28, 2/4, 2/11, 2/18, 2/25, 3/4, 3/18, 3/25, 4/1, 4/8, 4/15, 4/22.

As space is limited, students should be able to commit to attending a majority of the classes.

Application details: Apply by December 11, 2024. All applicants will be notified by email of the outcome of their submissions no later than January 6, 2025.

Students at Consortium schools, including GW, are not eligible to apply. You do not need academic or formal qualifications to apply.



To apply, please fill out this google form. You will be expected to include the following information:

Your full name
Your email address
Date of birth
Phone number
Prior GWID number (if applicable — you will not have this unless you have previously attended GW)
A statement confirming that you are not a student at any D.C. Consortium university
A brief statement of interest that answers the following question: How might you (and your work) benefit from participating in this Creative Nonfiction community workshop? (No more than 400 words)
An attached PDF or Word doc titled “JMM Workshop _LASTNAME FIRSTNAME" of a writing sample of creative nonfiction (12 point type, double-spaced, no more than 5 pages in length)

If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected].

This is a gentle reminder that Kat Chow, our Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington, will read this Thursday, November 14th from 6-7pm in Gelman 702.

We hope to see you there!

The Creative Writing Open House shared pizza, AWP conference opportunities and Study Abroad options.

The GW Creative Writing Open House is on October 30th from 4:30 to 6:00 in PHIL 109. Come share pizza and refreshments and meet the Creative Writing faculty. Join us and learn about the Minor and the Major in Creative Writing and English. Discover publishing opportunities in literary magazines and literary communities in Washington, DC.

We'll offer information about domestic and study abroad opportunities as well as information about the AWP writing conference in LA. We'll talk about the Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series and the Woven Words Reading Series.

Join English Dept GWU this Wednesday for Modes of Cognition: Implications for AI at 11:30 Wed Oct 23 in the Textile Museum and on Zoom. Sign up at

Modes of Cognition: Implications for AI Featuring Professor N. Katherine Hayles, this talk will offer a set of criteria by which a system may be judged to be cognitive or not, testing it against minimally cognitive biological lifeforms such as unicellular organisms and plants. The candidate criteria should admit implicit and nonconscious....

Today English Dept GWU went hiking at Great Falls, led by the student organization GW TRAiLS. What a splendid day! Faculty participants included Professor Tony Lopez and Professor Alexa Alice Joubin

Tyler Alexander is the winner of the Julian Clement Chase Creative Writing in Washington Prize for his piece, Big Chairs. He read an excerpt at the Martin Luther King Library in the District of Columbia as part of the ceremony.

THE JENNY MCKEAN MOORE READING SERIES AND THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT PRESENT

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
OCT 17
6-7 PM
GELMAN 702

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is the author of the Big Girl, Blue Talk and Love, and The Politics of Difference: Q***r Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora. She teaches at Georgetown University.

Join us and listen in as Dean Wahlbeck leads a new conversation series related to the November elections! The first one focuses on IMMIGRATION & MIGRATION; Dean Wahlbeck and faculty experts discuss global analysis of immigration and migration with a focus on historical and cultural perspectives. Please share and spread the word to learn from cutting-edge researchers across the disciplines.

Session I: IMMIGRATION & MIGRATION

Tuesday, September 24 | 5 p.m. EDT Lehman Auditorium (B1220) | Science & Engineering Hall

Featuring Dean Paul Wahlbeck in conversation with faculty experts to discuss the global analysis of immigration and migration:

Elizabeth Chacko, Professor of Geography and International Affairs

Thomas Guglielmo, Professor of American Studies and History

Kimberly Morgan, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs

Elizabeth Vaquera, Director of the GW Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute and Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Public Administration

Mark your calendar for our flagship event on AI on Wednesday October 22, featuring Professor N. Katherine Hayles. It will take place in person in the GW Textile Museum as well as on Zoom.

Public Lecture on AI by N. Katherine Hayles - Department of English Modes of Cognition: Implications for AI Public lecture by Professor N. Katherine Hayles, 11:30 am, Wednesday October 23, 2024 In-person and Zoom hybrid event. Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97309041943 Myers Room, George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum, 701 21st St NW, Washington,....

Welcome back to campus and to the 2024-2025 academic year, with a special welcome to first-year students and newly declared majors and minors! I’m delighted to greet you in my role as Chair of the English Department. --- Professor Antonio López

Welcome Back from the Department Chair - Department of English Dear English Department students, Welcome back to campus and to the 2024-2025 academic year, with a special welcome to first-year students and newly declared majors and minors! I’m delighted to greet you in my role as Chair of the English Department. I return for my second year leading the departm...

So fun to see Chet’la Sebree shine (of course!) last night at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Here she is with novelist John Vercher discussing his newest work, Devil Is Fine.

Following up on our recent post about Professor Edward P. Jones' wonderful achievement in the Times' list of best books of the 21st century, here's an article in today's Times about him: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/books/review/edward-p-jones-interview-the-known-world.html