(the Reader's Digest condensed version, for curious prospective students, et alia)
Born: Chicago, Ill.; also lived in Logan, Ut., Oroville, Calif., and Hartland, Wis.
Family: Married, with one teen living at home, one at college, four grown children from a previous marriage, and seven grandchildren.
Favorite Movies: The Sound of Music, It's a Wonderful Life!, Cool Hand Luke, Crosy-Hope-Lamour road pictures, The Naked Gun, Blazing Saddles, Star Wars movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark and sequels, romantic comedies, swashbucklers, John Wayne movies, countless others.
Favorite Music: Blues, Jimmy Buffett, Caribbean music, Arlo Guthrie, Steve Goodman, and oldies.
Hobbies & Interests: Reading, writing, movies, classic television shows, antiques, art, gardening, home improvement, fishing, ping-pong, billiards, travel, cooking (see Five Generations of Plath Recipes), wines, and watching da Bears, Cubs, Blackhawks and Bulls.
Craziest stunts: Hopped freight trains from Utah to Mexico and ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
Current position
R. Forrest Colwell Endowed Chair and Professor of English,
Illinois Wesleyan University (Assistant, 1988-93; Associate
1994-98)
Experience (Creative Writing)
Edited-published Clockwatch Review (a journal of the arts) from 1983-1999, which was honored in 1990 by the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses (New York City) as one of the top five literary magazines in the U.S.A.
Published fiction and poetry in numerous literary journals, including ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Amelia, Apalachee Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Cream City Review, Lullwater Review, Mississippi Valley Review, Modern Short Stories, National Forum, Panhandler, Rhino, Salt Hill Journal, Spelunker Flophouse, Spillway, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Sport Literate.
Courbet, on the Rocks, a chapbook of poems, published in 1994 by White Eagle Coffee Store Press (Fox River Grove, Ill.), and poems in numerous anthologies, including Men of Our Time: An Anthology of Male Poetry in Contemporary America (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1992) and Imported Breads: Literature of Cultural Exchange (Mammoth Press, 2003).
Directed the Hemingway Days' Writers' Workshop & Conference, 1986-96.
Served on literature panels for the Illinois Arts Council and Indiana Arts Commission and as a judge for national writing competitions, including The Hemingway Days Short Story Competition and Young Writers' Scholarships, the A.E. Coppard Prize for Fiction, and the Billee Murray Denny Poetry Awards.
Published articles in The Writer, Writer's Digest, Fiction Writer, and Writing Fiction, with articles reprinted in The Writer's Handbook 1993 and 2000, and two original fiction exercises included in Creating Fiction (Story Press, 1999).
Readings and guest lectures at Tarrant County Junior College, Ft. Worth (Tex.), Writing Today conference, Birmingham-Southern College (Ala.), Babbitt's Books, Normal (Ill.), Hofstra University (New York City), WordsFair, Bloomington (Ill.), Assembly of Illinois Community Arts Organizations annual meeting, Bloomington (Ill.), Richland College Literary Festival, Dallas (Tex.), Elgin Community College (Ill.), Bloom Township [Ill.] Second Annual Junior High Writing Conference,"Poetry Radio" (WGLT-FM), Millikin University, Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation arts advocacy program, Bloomington (Ill.), "American Indian Voices: A Regional Literary Symposium" (Racine, Wis.), Mid-America Playwrights Theatre (Springfield, Ill.), IWU Writer's Conference, Illinois Summer School for the Arts (Normal, Ill.), Illinois Writers Inc. Annual Convention (Normal, Ill.), Olney (Ill.) Central College, Wisconsin Educational Teleconference Network, Great Lakes Writers' Workshop, Alverno College (Milwaukee, Wis.), College for Kids, University Lake School (Hartland, Wis.), Univ. of Wisconsin-Washington County, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Wis.).
Keynote speaker, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Annual High
School Creative Writing Festival (600 students and teachers),
1999.
Experience (Literature and Literary Criticism)
Presented papers on Hemingway and Fitzgerald at international conferences in Pamplona, Spain; Paris and Nice, France; Sun Valley, Id.; London, England; Baltimore, Md.; Montgomery, Ala.; Oak Park, Ill.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Havana, Cuba.
Critical essays in The Hemingway Review, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, Journal of Modern Literature, Studies in Short Fiction, Kansas Quarterly, Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction, and North Dakota Review.
Editor of John Updike's Pennsylvania Interviews (Lehigh
University Press, 2016), Critical Insights Film: Casablanca
(Salem Press, 2016), Critical Insights: Raymond Carver (Salem
Press, 2013), Conversations with John Updike
(University Press of Mississippi, 1994); co-author, with Frank
Simons, Remembering
Ernest Hemingway (Ketch & Yawl Press, 1999); author, Historic Photos of Ernest Hemingway
(Turner Publishing Co., 2009).
Co-Editor, Clockwatch Reviews: An Online Quarterly of Books, 1999-01.
Recognized Hemingway and Updike scholar, with essays in John
Updike Remembered (McFarland Books, 2017), Hemingway in Context (Cambridge
University Press, 2012), Hemingway and Africa (Camden
House, 2011), Critical Insights: John Updike (Salem
Press, 2011), The Cambridge
Companion to John Updike (Cambridge University
Press, 2006), Hemingway
and
the Natural World (Univ. of Idaho Press, 1999), John
Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of
Grace (W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999), Rabbit Tales:
Poetry and Politics in John Updike's "Rabbit" Novels (Univ.
of Alabama Press, 1998), French Connections: Hemingway and
Fitzgerald Abroad (St. Martin's, 1998), and Hemingway
Repossessed (Prager, 1994).
Keynote speaker, "Remembering John Updike" tribute, Reading
Public Library, Reading, Pa., 5 April 2009.
Featured speaker on Hemingway for The Great Michigan Read, with
presentations at Saginaw Valley State University, Hoyt Library
(Saginaw) and Alice and Jack Wirt Public Library (Bay City), 18-19
March 2008.
Keynote speaker, 1999 Fall Conference of the Michigan Hemingway
Society and featured Hemingway scholar, "Hemingway in Key West" on
New Florida show #308, a production of WPBT-2 public
television in Miami (1993, rerun on the Travel Channel).
Experience (Journalism)
Since 1988, the sole person responsible for the journalism sequence at Illinois Wesleyan University and advisor to The Argus, one of the oldest, continuously published college newspapers in America. Two of my students have received Pulliam Fellowships, awarded annually to the top twenty graduating college students in the U.S. who plan to go on to a career in journalism.
Presented a series of lectures on "Hemingway and Journalism" at the Instituto Internacional de Periodismo Jos� Mart� in Havana, Cuba, June 2002.
Supervisor of student journalism internships at Illinois Wesleyan since 1988.
Former feature writer for Milwaukee Weekly and freelance
writer whose work has appeared in The Milwaukee Journal, Miami
Herald, Small Press Review, The News & Observer (Raleigh,
N.C.),
dialogue (Cleveland, Ohio), and The Pantagraph.
Managing Editor, Movie Metropolis (formerly DVD Town),
with reviews linked on
the Internet Movie Data Base (imbd.com) and RottenTomatoes.com
(I'm a Tomatometer critic).
Officer of the Illinois College Press Association for eight years
(including President), and recipient of the ICPA Outstanding
Service Award in 1999. Currently a member of the Board.
Editor-publisher of A Lake Country Christmas and Christmas in Watertown, two hugely successful seasonal-regional publications, 1983-87.
Former publicity director for the MACC Fund (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer) in Milwaukee, the Hartland (Wis.) Jaycees, and the Hemingway Days Festival in Key West, Fla.
PhD, English, 1988, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Concentration: 20th century American literature; dissertation on "The Painterly Aspects of John Updike's Fiction"
MA, English, 1982, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Concentration: creative writing
BA, English, 1980, California State Univ., Chico. Minors: journalism & philosophy
Diploma, 1968, Luther High School North (Chicago)
Finalist, 1998 Harry's Bar & American Grill International
Imitation Hemingway Competition.
1994 recipient, The Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence, Illinois Wesleyan's highest teacher-scholar honor.
Honorary Conch [Florida Keys Citizenship], presented by the Mayor
of Monroe County at the Hemingway Home & Museum on 14 July
1996, recognizing 10 years of service to the Hemingway Days
Festival.
Fulbright Scholar, Caribbean Regional Lecturing Program, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, Semester 1, 1995.
Finalist, IWU Student Senate Professor of the Year, 1992-93, 1993-94, & 2001-02.
1992 Graduate of the Last Decade Award, UWM Alumni Association.
1990 Editor's Award from the Council of Literary Magazines &
Presses (for "editorial excellence & vision" in Clockwatch
Review).
Faculty Advisor, The Argus student newspaper (rated among the top three Illinois college non-dailies serving a campus of 4000 students or less all but six times), since 1988
Faculty Advisor, Gamma Upsilon Media Honorary Society, since 1988
Member, Faculty-Staff Recognition Committee
Member, IWU Identity Advisory Group
Chair, Hearing Committee
I believe that students learn best by aggressively taking charge
of their education, rather than sitting back and taking notes or
asking that age-old annoying question, "What do you want?" Rather
than give asssignments and directions or templates for students to
use in order to achieve nearly identical results, I favor an
approach where every assignment is both a problem to be solved and
an opportunity to be grasped. I give students plenty of rope to
either dazzle me with their lariat tricks or hang themselves,
before we get into full explanations of logic, critical theories,
or proven strategies. It drives them crazy sometimes, but it also
affords students more opportunities for creativity and
individualized responses. When it comes to writing, I'm a
perfectionist with an escape clause. I do the best I can under
the circumstances and will revise and revise until the
deadline finally approaches. I try to impart that philosophy to my
students as well. Writing is a commitment to writing well and
getting things right. Period.