Dr. Bill Beverly

Associate Professor of English

Interests

• Creative writing (fiction, poetry, nonfiction)
• U.S. literature
• Teaching composition
• Popular culture and cultural studies
• Crime literature
• Film
• Gender studies
• Children's literature

Awards

• British Book Award for 2016 novel Dodgers
• PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction Finalist for 2016 novel Dodgers
• Rivendell Writers’ Colony Fellowship
• Individual Artist Award, Maryland State Arts Council, 2016
• The Walter F. Dakin Fellowship in fiction, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, 2016
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize for 2016 novel Dodgers

Select Works Published

• DODGERS, a novel
  , Crown, 2016
• OLD FLAME: FROM THE FIRST 10 YEARS OF 32 POEMS Magazine
  , WordFram, 2013
• ON THE LAM: NARRATIVES OF FLIGHT IN J. EDGAR HOOVER'S AMERICA
  , University Press of Mississippi, 2008
• Stories and short writing in print or online
  , Gargoyle, The Paris Review, The Mississippi Review, ShortList, CrimeTime, Bookanista, and elsewher,
• Presentation
  , Modern Language Association Conference, 2011
• Presentation
  , Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, 2009
• Presentation
  , Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, 2013
• Presentation
  , National Council of Teachers of English Conference, 2028

Philosophy

I stress the development of voice. Students must learn to speak clearly and write well, but their le ssons will be better learned and their triumphs more richly felt if they feel free to invest themselves in their writing, and if courses give them opportunities to address readers and gather response. Students who understand that they speak from a position within culture and through a nuanced language will speak precisely, confidently, and with intent. To read a beautifully composed text, be it Hamlet or an ad for chocolate cake, and to understand the act of close reading--its mechanics, its motivations, its inexhaustibility and inflexibility--provides a foundational and empowering experience to students in any major. Even though its mission is already overloaded and its institutional prestige relatively low, freshman English should aim for no less than this: to provide a sustained immersion in intellectual labor that lays the groundwork for four years of study.