Our deepest sympathies go to those at Virginia Tech and their families. Violence on any campus is an attack on our own learning communities and a betrayal of the underlying hope that education represents. Please join us in offering condolences.
Oronte
John Griswold, who uses the pen name Oronte Churm at Inside Higher Ed and elsewhere, was born in Vietnam and raised in coal country in Southern Illinois. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in War, Literature and the Arts; Brevity; Natural Bridge; and Ninth Letter. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, listed as notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, and included in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3 (WW Norton).
He is the author of a novel, A Democracy of Ghosts, and a nonfiction book, Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City.
He teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana.
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Most Recent Articles
April 13, 2007
This is the second interview in a series.
Two years ago I had an e-mail from another adjunct on campus. He wanted to audit a creative-writing class I was teaching, and I said if he could stand it, I could too.
April 10, 2007
Robert Olen Butler’s recent writing-advice book, From Where You Dream, warns of the difficulties of being a literary artist instead of, say, a basketball player:
April 8, 2007
My wife and I will soon open part of our home as Churm House, an inn for wayward academics.
April 3, 2007
We have a brilliant young scholar friend whose critical mind won’t rest. Last summer he performed a Marxist critique of Thomas the Tank Engine while our kids watched the videos at our feet. (“’They’re the really useful crew?’” he said as the theme song began. “It’s a lesson in class identity. Relations of production!”) He’s also written about James Bond and told me how Bond’s capitalist fetish for commodities went hand-in-hand with an empire’s “license to kill.”
March 29, 2007
I planned at the start of this blog to have occasional guest writers, and today I'm pleased to bring you a dispatch from the first one, a young English teacher currently in South Korea. Enjoy! --Churm
March 22, 2007
On campuses everywhere, the entire week before any break should be set aside for these kinds of colloquies:
