Introduction
Tom Deans and Jason Courtmanche have described how a college or university writing center can help change “incoming student attitudes toward writing” (58). This brief piece presents tutor and tutee evidence for their assertion. Tutors from the Salem State University Writing Center have reflected on their experiences tutoring early access Salem High School students enrolled in the University’s first-year writing course and a first-year history course. The high school students have also reflected on the tutoring they received.
Introduction
Tutoring remotely is still collaborative learning. We have found that Frost’s speaker in “The Tuft of Flowers” was right: the collaborative relationship that writing center tutors seek to nurture can exist in the virtual environment as well as in the more familiar f2f environment. People “work together . . . / Whether they work together or apart” (Frost “The Tuft of Flowers,” ll. 41-42).
Book Description
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit New Hampshire in March, it became clear that April—National Poetry Month—would not be celebrated with live poetry readings and writers’ workshops as in past years. In an effort to provide a channel for creatively navigating our common experiences, New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary set out to host two virtual poetry writing groups each week in April. At the end of the month, New Hampshire residents were invited to submit their work for consideration in an anthology of poems addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 100 writers submitted their work—each with a unique voice and a fresh perspective on the pandemic’s impact in New Hampshire.
Peary, A. (2020, November). Why Look for Animals? Hobart.
"In this dappled language, like a woods painted by Neil Welliver, in and out of our attention, animals wander in the camouflage. They are highlighted by our attention: each stands in a yellow bar of notice. A porcupine overhead in a birch tree like a painful chandelier. A skunk ushering her kittens through an unfriendly neighbor’s open garage door. Three male turkeys that look exactly like crepe paper birds, plumage on full display, in a row on the roof of a Federalist-style house in November, practically a pun. You might be rewarded by the sight of an albino squirrel, moving as a patch of white-out above this sentence. Then come the packs, colonies, swarms, flocks, congress, troop, gang, congregation, mob, cast, brood, nest, school, company, bevy, horde and covey of creatures that are contained inside this paragraph without further detail. I am tempted to capitalize the nouns like Emily Dickinson or the German language. Skunk. Turkey. Porcupine. Bull Moose. It’s a game I play. Instead of a word count, an animal count."
Peary, A. (2020, Fall). The Word. The Poets' Touchstone.62(2), 76-77.
Peary, A. (2020, Nov. 25). Words of gratitude from New Hampshire. New York Times.
Book Description
The period from the 1970s to the present day has produced an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of Caribbean writing that has been widely acclaimed. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020 traces the region's contemporary writings across the established genres of prose, poetry, fiction and drama into emerging areas of creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction with a particular attention on challenging the narrow canon of Anglophone male writers. It maps shifts and continuities between late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Caribbean literature in terms of innovations in literary form and style, the changing role and place of the writer, and shifts in our understandings of what constitutes the political terrain of the literary and its sites of struggle. Whilst reaching across language divides and multiple diasporas, it shows how contemporary Caribbean Literature has focused its attentions on social complexity and ongoing marginalizations in its continued preoccupations with identity, belonging and freedoms.
Rodríguez, M. (2020). Around the world: In search of freedom (K.Valens, Trans.). Bi Women Quarterly 31 (3), 3-5.
Book Description
In Set in Stone, Kevin Carey’s poems tell stories as dreams, as memories, as rituals, or ceremonies. Carey writes poetry for the everyperson, poetry that deals with memory, loss, and nostalgia in an accessible and honest way. These poems tell stories about growing up and growing older, about loss and victory, giving praise to the moments that pass through our lives and the imprint they leave behind. Carey embraces the mystery of nostalgia, the haunted memories, worn and cemented by time, that string a life together. These are poems of places and of people, both real and imagined. These are poems about summer ponds and barroom nights, basketball and superheroes—poems that remind us of our humanness. These are poems, set in stone, to be chipped away at carefully, revealing the truths hidden underneath.
Book Description
1980
Revere Beach, Massachusetts
Detective Eddie Devlin is about to be relieved of his duty by the Revere Police Department.
A year ago, he shot the killer of a woman in the marsh, but the man’s body disappeared from the crime scene. Eddie soon became a suspect, then a person of interest, and finally a casualty of the ongoing investigation.
Shortly after he is let go, two bodies are found in the same place, and suspicions about Eddie’s guilt resurface. Determined to clear his name, the new civilian Devlin conducts his own investigation with the help of his bartender friend, Dana, and his almost girlfriend, Gwen.
The sordid beachfront, the murky marsh, and the rain-soaked season all help to set the stage for this gritty and unsettling mystery, where Devlin battles his relentless demons on the way to uncovering a deeper conspiracy.
Carey, K. (2020) Learning to Talk. Paterson Literary Review, 48.