This month, we highlight recent and pending publications, conference presentations, and other literary activities of current graduate students in the University of Utah Department of English:

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Shira Dentz, doctoral candidate in poetry, has the following poem publications forthcoming: “Marsupium” in The American Poetry Review (www.aprweb.org/); “X” and “A Brook Somewhere Goes Against a White Mountain Discipline” in Bird Dog (www.birddogmagazine.com/); “Seven degrees” in Lungfull! (http://lungfull.org/); “War, Mints, and Memory” online in Pinstripe Fedora (http://pinstripefedora.com); “This ring rages a pen” in 1913: A Journal of Forms (www.journal1913.org/); and “Love’s the art imagined by desire” and “angular gyrus” in Jubilat (http://jubilat.org/).

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Cara Diaconoff, doctoral candidate in fiction, won third place in Irreantum magazine’s 2007 fiction contest, sponsored by the Association of Mormon Letters, with chapter one of I’ll Be a Stranger to You, forthcoming in its June 2008 issue (www.irreantum.org); the manuscript also placed first in the 2007 Utah Arts Council Writing Contest’s Novel category (http://arts.utah.gov/). Diaconoff is a 2007-08 fellow in the U of U’s Tanner Humanities Center.

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Barbara Duffey, doctoral candidate in poetry, has three poems, “On Earning My Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge,” “Combo, Per the Norm,” and “Hircine,” forthcoming in Prairie Schooner (http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/index.html); her manuscript I Might Be Mistaken was a semifinalist in the 2007 Akron Poetry Prize competition (www3.uakron.edu/uapress/poetryprize.html).

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Halina Duraj, doctoral candidate in fiction, placed first in the 2007 Utah Arts Council Writing Contest’s Essay category with “My Boyfriend is a Fascist” (http://arts.utah.gov/).

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Eryn Green, MFA candidate in fiction, has a poem, “Aphelion,” forthcoming in Rhino (www.rhinopoetry.org/); a poem, “A History of Alchemy,” in the Iron Horse Literary Review (http://english.ttu.edu/IH/); poems “Phase Changes” and “Of mntns” in the Denver Quarterly (www.denverquarterly.com/); the poem “Bones” online in H-NGM-N (www.h-ngm-n.com); and the poem “Stillness/ Forgiveness” in Word For/ Word (www.wordforword.info).

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Matthew Heimburger, doctoral candidate in American Studies, successfully completed his doctoral exams and is now at work on his dissertation; in October, he presented “Between a Rock and a Hard Gaze: Tracking the Self-Conscious Ecologist in Three Modern American Nature Writers” at the Western Literature Association’s conference in Tacoma, Wash. (www.usu.edu/westlit/conference2007.htm).

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Dawn Lonsinger, doctoral candidate in poetry, has the following poem publications forthcoming: “Archaea” in American Letters & Commentary (www.amletters.org/); “Backyard” and “Incidental Love Poem” in The New Orleans Review (www.loyno.edu/~noreview/); “Centralia, PA” in The Massachusetts Review (www.massreview.org/); “Stitching Became a System” in Backwards City Review (www.backwardscity.net); “The Trilling Wire in the Bone” in Bellingham Review (www.ac.wwu.edu/~bhreview); “Pictures Confirm Spears Has Gained Weight in Her Breasts” in Terminus Magazine (www.terminusmagazine.com/); and “Hive Together, Pull” and “There Will Come Soft Ruin” in Fourteen Hills (http://14hills.net/); her forthcoming chapbook, the linoleum crop, was chosen by Thomas Lux for The Jeanne Duval Editions & Terminus Magazine Chapbook Contest.

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Jennilyn Merten, doctoral candidate in American Studies, presented “American Zion: Big Love, Polygamy and Desert Retreats” in October at the 2007 Western Literature Association conference in Tacoma, Wash. (www.usu.edu/westlit/conference2007.htm). She is currently working on a feature-length documentary called Sons of Perdition, which follows four teens exiled from Warren Jeffs’ southern-Utah FLDS polygamist community; see the trailer at www.leftturnfilms.com (click on Sons of Perdition, then trailer).

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Timothy O’Keefe, doctoral candidate in poetry, has the following poem publications forthcoming: “Elegy in Late Spring” in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts (www.blackbird.vcu.edu/); “Meditation in Red, Blue, and Violet” in Cimarron Review (http://cimarronreview.okstate.edu/); “Broken Sonnet, Lost Epilogue” in Pleiades (www.cmsu.edu/englphil/pleiades/); and “Broken Sonnet, It Begins in Black and White” and “Broken Sonnet, It Ends in Black and White” in POOL: A Journal of Poetry (www.poolpoetry.com/).

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Sarah Orton, MFA candidate in fiction, has a story, “Little Red,” in Mytholog (www.mytholog.com/fiction/sarahorton_littlered.html); and a story, “La Belle au Bois Dormant,” in Prick of the Spindle, vol. 1.1 (http://prickofthespindle.com/fiction/orton/la_belle_au_bois_dormant.htm).

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Christopher Patton, doctoral candidate in poetry, has a translation of “The Seafarer” forthcoming in Canadian Notes and Queries (www.notesandqueries.ca); his book of poetry, Ox, was recently reviewed in Books in Canada.

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Jacob Paul, doctoral candidate in fiction, has an excerpt from his novel Sarah/Sara forthcoming in the Fall 2007 Hunger Mountain (www.hungermtn.org).

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Nicole Sheets, doctoral candidate in nonfiction, presented an essay, “An Ear for Utah: Exploring the Music of Olivier Messiaen,” in October at the Western Literature Association conference in Tacoma, Wash. (www.usu.edu/westlit/conference2007.htm); her essay “Here’s Looking at Men” appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of North Dakota Quarterly (www.und.edu/org/ndq/). Sheets is nonfiction editor for Quarterly West (www.utah.edu/quarterlywest).

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Sundy Watanabe, doctoral candidate in both Rhetoric & Composition and Education, Culture, & Society, has an article, “Because We Do Not Know Their Way: Standardizing Practices and Peoples through Habitus, the NCLB ‘Highly-Qualified’ Mandate, and PRAXIS I Examinations,” forthcoming in Journal of American Indian Education (http://jaie.asu.edu).

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Paul Wilson, doctoral candidate in American Studies, presented the paper “From the Page to the Screen: Fast Food Nation and Environmental Rhetoric in the New West” in October at the Western Literature Association conference in Tacoma, Wash., where the paper was also nominated for the Willa Pilla Award, given to the most humorous paper (www.usu.edu/westlit/conference2007.htm).