Literary House Celebrates Faculty Authors With Open House Saturday, September 29

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College invites the community to meet seven faculty authors at a special event Saturday, September 29, at 2 p.m.  Please stop by the House, located at 407 Washington Avenue, to visit with the following faculty members and learn about the books they have published in the past two years:

Emily Chamlee-Wright

The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery: Social Learning in a Post-Disaster Environment

Routledge, 2010.

The Political Economy of Katrina and Community Rebound

Edward Elgar, 2012.

Jehanne Dubrow

Red Army Red: Poems

Northwestern University Press, 2012.

Stateside: Poems

Northwestern University Press 2010

Meredith Davies Hadaway

The River is the Reason: Poems

Word Press, 2011

Alisha R. Knight

Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream: An African American Writer's (Re)Visionary Gospel of Success

University of Tennessee Press, 2012.

Kathryn M. Moncrief

Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction and Performance

Co-edited with Kathryn R. McPherson

Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.

Gary S. Schiff

In Search of Polin: Chasing Jewish Ghosts in Today's Poland

Peter Lang Publishing, 2012. 

Richard Striner

Lincoln and Race

Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.

Supernatural Romance in Film: Tales of Love, Death, and the Afterlife

McFarland & Co., 2011.

Lincoln's Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power

Rowman & Littlefield, 2010

Poet Hadaway Receives Prestigious Fellowship

AMHERST, VA. – Poet Meredith Davies Hadaway of Chestertown has been awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Funded by the William G. Sackett Fellowship Endowment, the award will provide a three-week working retreat in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in spring 2012. Hadaway, who serves as Vice President of College Relations and Marketing at Washington College and – occasionally – as an adjunct instructor in English, will focus on her poetry in the company of 25 other artists during her fellowship.

Hadaway has published two volumes, The River is a Reason (January, 2011) and Fishing Secrets of the Dead (2005), both issued by Word Press in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of Hadaway's poems was recently selected by Mark Doty for honorable mention in the 2010 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Poetry Prize. Another was chosen for inclusion in Best Millennium Writings Awards. She has received two Pushcart nominations and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award. In addition to publishing poetry in numerous literary journals, she is a frequent contributor of book reviews to Poetry International and serves as poetry editor for The Summerset Review.

Hadaway also is an avid musician who has combined poetry and Celtic harp in performances around the U.S. and Ireland. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an M.A. in Psychology from Washington College, and a B.A. in English Literature from American University.

The VCCA is one of the nation's largest year-round artists’ communities and has served more than 4,000 artists since its inception in 1971. It provides lodging, meals, and an undistracted environment where visual artists, writers, composers, performance artists, filmmakers and other collaborative artists can focus on their work.

Previous VCCA Fellows have received worldwide attention through publications, exhibitions, compositions, performances, and have earned major awards and accolades, including MacArthur grants, Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts awards, Rome Prizes, Pollock-Krasner grants, National Book Awards, Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and Academy Award nominations.

Hadaway Reads Poetry at Spoleto Festival

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Washington College's Vice President for College Relations and Marketing, Meredith Davies Hadaway, participated in Charleston’s prestigious Spoleto Festival on June 3, reading from her new book of poems, The River is a Reason. She was part of the Sundown Poetry Series, organized by the city’s Piccolo Spoleto, a companion festival that highlights outstanding local and regional artists during the 17-day run of the Spoleto Festival.

“I was honored to be part of a festival that has cultivated such an enthusiastic and dedicated audience for poetry,” says Hadaway of her reading, where listeners filled the brick courtyard of Charleston’s historic Dock Street Theatre.

Published in January by Word Press, The River Is a Reason is Hadaway’s second book of poetry. One poem in the collection was selected by the distinguished poet Mark Doty for honorable mention in the 2010 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry contest. Two others were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. A fourth received honorable mention in the New Millennium Writings awards. This year Hadaway also received an Individual Artist Award from The Maryland State Arts Council.

"As they balance between the everyday and the mysterious, as they flow between praise and lament, these poems are dignified throughout by a master’s feel for sentence and line,” poet Peter Campion, editor of Literary Imagination, the journal of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, wrote of the collection.

Hadaway, says her muse and preoccupation is the Chester River. “I live 30 feet from the river and it permeates everything I do,” she says. “The tide is an amazing pulse and provides a rhythm to your day. If you live where I do, where the water is not very deep, you are always aware of it. I love that the river goes away, and thatit comes back again.”

She says that the title of her collection, though it seems a declarative statement, is really a question. In the book’s final poem, “Why the River,” she seems to answer it: “because it traps the clouds so we can sail across/ both heaven and earth/ because it carries our tears, swells/ with our salt/ because it is a body/ because it bears our weight.”

Word Girls Convene in Chestertown for an Evening of "Full Frontal Poetry"

CHESTERTOWN—It’s something called Full Frontal Poetry, and it’s being billed as a one-night show for “adults only (exceptional children excepted).” What it will deliver is a reading by The Word Girls, three nationally recognized—and eminently respectable—poets and friends with strong connections to Chestertown. The Compleat Bookseller, 301 High Street, is hosting this literary event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 29th, the last Friday of National Poetry Month.

Appearing as “The Word Girls,” each reading from a newly published book of verse, are:


Jehanne Dubrow, author of three poetry collections, most recently Stateside (Northwestern University Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The New England Review. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Washington College.
Website: www.jehannedubrow.com


Meredith Davies Hadaway, author of two collections of poetry, The River is a Reason (Word Press, 2011) and Fishing Secrets of the Dead. She is a frequent contributor of book reviews to Poetry International and serves as poetry editor for The Summerset Review. Hadaway is currently Vice President for College Relations & Marketing at Washington College. Website: http://mdh.washcoll.edu


Erin Murphy, author of four books of poetry, most recently Word Problems (Word Press, 2011), and co-editor of Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets. Her poems and essays have been featured in numerous journals and anthologies and on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac." A 1990 graduate of Washington College who taught English at her alma mater for several years, she is now an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State Altoona. Website: www.erin-murphy.com

For more information, contact the Compleat Bookseller at 410-778-1480.

Strings Attached: Tea & Talk Series Welcomes Poet & Harpist Meredith Hadaway March 18

Chestertown, MD, March 13, 2003 — Washington College's O'Neill Literary House Tea & Talk Series continues its spring lecture series on Tuesday, March 18 at 4 p.m. with “Strings Attached,” a poetry reading and Celtic harp performance by Meredith Davies Hadaway, Vice President for College Relations at Washington College. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Hadaway has played the harp in local and regional venues, and has traveled to Ireland as a guest artist for the Clifden (Connemara) Community Arts festival. She is currently a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Vermont College.

On April 22, the spring Tea & Talk Series will conclude with a talk by equity actress Polly Kuulei Sommerfeld, a lecturer in drama at Washington College, speaking about “What's Equity Got to Do With It?”, a Q&A focusing on the challenges faced by professional actors.

The Tea & Talk Series provides opportunities for college faculty and staff to share their areas of expertise with the college and with the surrounding community. All talks are held at the O'Neill Literary House on Washington Avenue in Chestertown. Tea is served at 4 p.m.; talks begin at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Will Japan Go Ballistic? O'Neill Literary House Launches Spring Tea & Talk Series February 25

Chestertown, MD, February 10, 2003 — Washington College's O'Neill Literary House Tea & Talk Series kicks off its spring lecture series on Tuesday, February 25 at 4 p.m. with “Japan Going Nuclear?,” a talk to address the likelihood of Japan developing nuclear weapons in response to current tensions with North Korea and in its region. The talk will be presented by Dr. Andrew Oros, assistant professor of international studies and political science at the College. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. Oros specializes in the international and comparative politics of East Asia, theories of international relations, and foreign intelligence and espionage. He has published articles in Japan Forum, Public and International Affair, Intelligence and National Security, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and numerous other journals. His report “Can Japan Come Back?” was published recently in a Japanese newspaper.

The Tea & Talk Series will continue on March 18 with “Strings Attached,” a poetry reading and Celtic harp performance by Meredith Davies Hadaway, Vice President for College Relations at Washington College. Hadaway has played the harp in local and regional venues, and has traveled to Ireland as a guest artist for the Clifden (Connemara) Community Arts festival. She is currently a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Vermont College.

On April 22, Polly Kuulei Sommerfeld, a lecturer in drama at Washington College, will present “What's Equity Got to Do With It?”, a Q&A focusing on the challenges faced by professional actors.

The Tea & Talk Series provides opportunities for college faculty and staff to share their areas of expertise with the college and with the surrounding community. All talks are held at theO'Neill Literary House on Washington Avenue in Chestertown. Tea is served at 4 p.m.; talks begin at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.