I can't overstate the importance of WLA to my career. I felt so welcomed as a graduate student that WLA has become my intellectual home.
| Angela Ashurst-McGee Alan Barlow Matt Burkhart Diane Bush Vanessa Hall Matthew Lavin Pamela Pierce Jacoba Mendelkow Poppleton Sarah Rudd Brett Sigurdson Sarah Stoeckl Sarah Vause Angela Waldie Angela Ashurst-McGee, 1997/98. Angela began work at the journal as the first-ever Thomas J. Lyon Fellow three months before her second son, Logan, was born. Since Angela’s fellowship was set up only for one year, she then taught composition at USU. She became the Assistant Director of Writing for English 1010 and helped plan the following year’s composition curriculum and train new instructors. She has worked as a freelance editor and then as the associate editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Series. [You see, those editorial skills do come in handy after all sometimes!] She is now a certified professional resumé writer und the founder and president of Red Rocket Resumé. A few words from Angela: “My experience at Utah State University was almost uniformly positive. I got a good education taking good classes from good teachers. Faculty members were uncommonly friendly and willing to give advice and act as mentors. The English department treats its master’s students like colleagues and professionals rather than peons; comp teachers and editorial fellows work alongside faculty and participate in department decision-making.” Update on 7-22-02: Congratulations to Angela and Mark on the birth of their third son, Levi Christian, who was born on June 1, 2002, and who, according to Angela, “has the biggest cheeks of all the Ashurst-McGee boys thus far.” Update on 9-6-06: In the meantime, Angela and Mark have had another boy, Jesse Earl, and they also have adopted a girl, Haley Marisa, to balance out the gender inequality in their family.
Vanessa Hall, 1998-2000. Vanessa graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University in 1998. She then served as the first two-year fellow at Western American Literature. During that time she also completed her master’s with a thesis on Estelle Ishigo at Utah State University. Purdue University awarded her an Andrews Fellowship to pursue a PhD. Her major field is contemporary American literature and her minor fields are labor history and women’s studies. Her research and teaching interests also include gender and class in literature and culture, Native American literature, and western American literature. Her dissertation is a cultural biography of Raymond Carver. As of fall 2007, Vanessa is the first one of our editorial fellows to finish her PhD and become a professor of English. She has taken a position at the New York City College of Technology in downtown Brooklyn—far from her home state of Montana. In the meantime, she also has become the mother of two lovely girls and is expecting a boy. Congrats!
Sarah Rudd, 1999-2001. Sarah grew up in Salt Lake City and Mexico. She moved back to the Salt Lake City area, where she now works as a realtor. Sarah still thinks folklore rules and she contributed to a book on the history of folklore in Utah. The title of her contribution is “Utah Latino Folklore Studies.” We are looking forward to an update from Sarah once baby #3 is born. Congrats!
Matt Burkhart, 2000-2002. Matt grew up somewhere around Chicago, came to us from Missoula, and has now acquired a PhD from the University of Arizona in Tucson. He presently teaches at the University of Northern Arizona. His research focuses on western American studies, especially Native American and environmental literature. He won the J. Golden Taylor Award for best paper submitted to the WLA Conference in 2003. From 2003-2005 he served as the graduate student representative on the WLA Executive Council.
Alan Barlow, 2001-2003. Alan grew up in southern Utah and has a BA from Utah State University. His computer skills were indispensable in our office. After getting his master’s degree in English, he earned a master’s degree in Management and Human Resources at Utah State University and then served as Director of Human Resources at Wilderness Quest in Monticello, Utah. He is now the Chief Compliance Officer and Human Resources Director for the Tule River Indian Health Center in Porterville, California. As of 2007, he and his wife, Emily, had 3 children.
Angela Waldie, 2002-2004. Angela has served as the Graduate Student Representative to the WLA Executive Council. In 2006, she was the recipient of the J. Golden Taylor Award for best graduate student paper submitted to the WLA Conference. Angela is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary, where her research focuses on portrayals of species extinction in contemporary Canadian and American literature. When not reading, researching, or teaching, Angela can be found exploring the hiking trails and hot springs of the Canadian Rockies, writing poetry, weaving, practicing yoga, or salsa dancing.
Sarah Vause, 2003-2005. Sarah has a BA from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, where she grew up. She is now teaching classes at Utah State University and Weber State University. She got married and is running and hiking in the beautiful mountains of Utah. She had her first baby in 2010.
Matthew Lavin, 2004-2006. Matt came to us from St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, where he also worked for a newspaper before going back to graduate school at USU. He has moved on to acquire a PhD at the University of Iowa, where he’s been awarded the Seely Fellowship for his final dissertation year. In 2008, Matt was the recipient of the J. Golden Taylor Award for best graduate student paper presented at the WLA Conference. And for 2011 and 2012, Matt will serve as a graduate student representative on the Executive Board for the Western Literature Association.
Sarah Stoeckl, 2005-2007. Sarah grew up in Salt Lake City and got her BA at Weber State University. She was awarded the WAG Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for writing the best MA thesis across all departments at Utah State University. She is now working on her PhD at the University of Oregon in Eugene and recently had a paper published in the Willa Cather Newsletter & Review.
Jacoba Mendelkow Poppleton, 2006-2008. Jacoba now works as a public relations and marketing specialist in the VP for Research’s office at Utah State University. Besides creating innovative marketing materials for USU, she diligently (maybe?) works on her own writing. She also can’t resist a beautiful pair of shoes.
Diane Bush, 2007-2009. Diane has taken an editorial position with another academic journal, the Western Historical Quarterly. Her obsession with the Donner Party continues. Or does it?
Pamela Pierce, 2008-2010. Pamela is looking forward to pursuing a career as an archivist. She is studying library science at Indiana University Bloomington and works at a journal titled Language@Internet. Independent bookstores remain a lasting love.
Pamela in front of the Tattered Cover in Denver, 2009. Brett Sigurdson, 2010-2011. Brett currently teaches writing at Utah Valley University and Salt Lake Community College. He and his wife, Kate, still live in Salt Lake City but are plotting a return East so that Brett can “further satisfy his addiction to graduate school in an MFA or PhD program.”
Brett with his dog, Miles Davis, 2010. |
