Public Reading to Benefit Hurricane Katrina Victims

The Converse English Department and “Concept,” the student literary journal, will present a public reading Sept. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in Dalton Auditorium to benefit the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund.

Susan Tekulve, Sam Howie and Rick Mulkey of the Converse English Department’s writing faculty will present various samples of their writings. Monetary donations will be accepted at the door, and copies of the latest issue of “Concept” will be available for purchase. All monetary donations and all profits from the sale of “Concept” will go to the Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief fund. Dalton Auditorium is located in the bottom floor of Phifer Science Hall.

Professor Rick Mulkey is the author of “Before the Age of Reason” and “Greatest Hits: 1994-2004.” His work appears in the anthologies “American Poetry: the Next Generation,” and “Poems and Sources” among others. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, The Literary Review, The Connecticut Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poet Lore, Poetry East, and Southern Poetry Review. He has received several awards including the Hawthornden Fellowship and the Literary Review’s Charles Angoff Award. His teaching interests include Creative Writing: poetry, Twentieth Century American Poetry, and Science and Literature. He directs the Converse College Young Writers Summer Workshop, and recently he has been a visiting writer at Michigan State University, Radford University and “The Spirit of Place Writing Workshop” in Vitorchiano, Italy. In 2003, Mulkey received Converse College’s O’Herron Award for Faculty Excellence.

Professor Tekulve’s nonfiction and short stories have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, ACM, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Literary Review, Connecticut Review, and Black Warrior Review. Her story collection, “My Mother’s War Stories,” received the 2004 Winnow Press fiction prize. In addition she has received a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship, and she was the first alternate for the 1999 South Carolina Fiction Fellowship. Her full-length short story collection, “Rooms People Live In,” was a finalist for the 2002 and 2003 G.S. Charat Chandra Prize with BookMark Press. Her teaching interests include creative writing: fiction, creative writing: nonfiction, professional writing, and contemporary fiction. She has taught creative writing study abroad courses in Italy for the Converse College travel study program, and she teaches fiction writing in “The Spirit of Place Writing Workshop” in Vitorchiano, Italy. In 2004, she received the Kathryn Amelia Brown Teaching Award. The literary magazine Puerto Del Sol, which is out of New Mexico State University, has accepted her travel essay “The Plain of Sorrento” for publication in 2005.

Sam Howie’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as The Writer’s Chronicle, Potomac Review, Bitter Oleander, Southern Humanities Review, Snake Nation Review, Lullwater Review, Emrys Journal, Creative Loafing, and two publications of the Hub City Writers Project. He was recently chosen first alternate for the South Carolina Artist Fellowship in prose. After receiving his MEd from Converse and an MFA from Vermont College, he joined the Converse faculty as an adjunct professor. Currently he is serving as a visiting instructor of English and Director of the Young Writers Summer Workshop.