Author: Keith Anthony

Novelist and professor Tayari Jones was recently featured in The New York Times, talking about her writing process, her return to Atlanta, and her latest novel Kin. Jones, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing, is the previous recipient of the a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and her book An American Marriage was the winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Read the full interview at the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/books/review/tayari-jones-kin.html?searchResultPosition=2

Prof. Geraldine Higgins, Director of The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature, spoke with the AJC’s Suzanne Van Atten on the 2026 Lectures, featuring Min Jin Lee. The first Asian American writer in the series, Lee is the author of Pachinko (2017) and Free Food for Millionaires (2022), as well as the upcoming novel America Hagwon (September, 2026). The full interview can be read here:

https://www.ajc.com/arts-entertainment/2026/02/pachinko-author-min-jin-lee-to-deliver-free-ellmann-lectures-at-emory/

The 2026 Lectures schedule:

March 1st: “The Education of a Writer” delivered by Min Jin Lee. In this lecture, Lee will reflect on her own unlikely path to becoming a novelist and how her writing has been shaped by the education she received, both inside and outside the walls of the university.

March 2nd, “Writing American.” In this lecture, Min Jin Lee will explore what it means to be an American writer in the current moment, reflecting on both her own identity and experiences and how ideas about American literature have been shaped and reshaped over time.

March 3rd, “Writers and the World”— a Creativity Conversation in which Min Jin lee will be joined by acclaimed novelist Tayari Jones (An American Marriage, Kin) for a conversation about the creative process and the ways that culture, geography, and politics inflect their work.

The Ellmann Lectures are free and open to all; tickets required. Free tickets are available through the Schwartz Center Box Office online, by phone at (404) 727-5050, or in person. 

Meet Abby Brown, who is currently a 2025-2026 Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry! Abby is writing her honors thesis in non-fiction through the English and Creative Writing program. Here’s what she had to say:

“My project aims to illuminate the impacts of the death penalty and the larger carceral state on individuals with loved ones formerly executed or currently incarcerated. While I have personal convictions against the death penalty, my thesis is not argumentative. My goal is to convey these individuals’ unique experiences as honestly as possible. I have been interviewing mothers, pen pals, friends, activists, and others invested in death penalty work. My fellowship through the Fox Center has allowed me to bounce ideas off peers pursuing humanities theses. Conversations with my fellow fellows have been interesting, as all of our projects and fields of study are wildly different. My main takeaway from the fellowship thus far has been the value of trial and error. Hearing my peers share different iterations their ideas have gone through has helped me recognize the value of an adaptable mindset, especially during the thesis process.”

Renowned for his work on Georgia Civil Rights cold cases and his WABE series “Buried Truths,” Pulitzer-Prize winner and journalist Hank Klibanoff’s teaching is showcased in Emory Report.

https://tinyurl.com/3bhdfbuh

Congratulations to Ghazala Hashmi on an incredible accomplishment!

She has just been elected as Virginia’s lieutenant governor! Hashmi earned her doctorate in Emory’s English department in 1992 with a dissertation titled William Carlos Williams and the American ground of “In the American Grain” and “Paterson.”  Her advisor was Prof. Peter Dowell.

Most recently, she was elected to the Virginia Senate in 2019 and was then reelected in 2023. 

Well done, Ghazala!

Photo:HashmiCampaign – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149290578

Congratulations to Cameron Hart on an impressive year! 

Cameron, a junior English major from Memphis, was one of just 15 students selected to study at the inaugural Folger Institute Undergraduate Spring Seminar, 2025. The program, titled “Whose Sovereignty?,” was led by Professor of English Urvashi Chakravarty (University of Toronto) and explored power and consent across political, social, sexual, racial, and economic spheres. Throughout the spring semester, Cameron engaged with modern and early contemporary texts, spoke with guest scholars, and visited the Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Her final seminar project was a podcast in collaboration with three peers from other institutions that reflected on the experience.

Last fall, Cameron was also admitted to Emory’s Scholarly Inquiry and Research Experience (SIRE) Program, a year-long program for first-time undergraduate researchers. As an assistant to Professor Patricia Cahill throughout the academic year, Cameron helped prepare an edition of Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI, advanced databases and web platforms with the support of library staff, and worked on an independent research project. Cameron presented her research at the SIRE Symposium at the Emory Student Center in April 2025, exploring topics from the Popish Plot to a modern production of Shakespeare’s history plays staged on actual British battlefields.

Cameron plans to continue studying early modern literature and is especially interested in Shakespearean adaptations during the Restoration. After graduating from Emory, she hopes to pursue a PhD in English and is excited to see how her research interests continue to evolve. Well done, Cameron! –Contributions by Pat Cahill and Safa Wahidi

 Congratulations to 2018 Ph.D. alum Richie Hofmann, who has been awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2025 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  His poetry appears in two previous collections, A Hundred Lovers (2022) and Second Empire (2015), and his latest, The Bronze Arms will be published in February 2026.  His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Yale Review. His honors include the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.