Jen Hofer Reading: Monday April 16 7:30pm

JEN HOFER, the special guest of the Emerging Voices / Dallas mentoring program, will read from her work:

Monday, April 16
7:30 PM
The McDermott Suite
McDermott Library
The University of Texas at Dallas
DIRECTIONS

Hofer is a poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. She writes letters for people in public spaces at her escritorio público, and makes tiny handmade books at her kitchen table in Cypress Park, Los Angeles.

Emerging Voices / Dallas: Deadline Extended!

The application for the PEN Texas mentoring program, Emerging Voices / Dallas, has been extended to February 24. Apply soon for this high-quality, intensive program to help your voice emerge in your poetry, prose, creative non-fiction, or translation. The on-line application is found here.

Emerging Voices / Dallas: Mentoring from PEN Texas

EMERGING VOICES: DALLAS is the PEN Texas mentoring program for beginning poets and writers of both fiction and creative nonfiction. Geared for community college students, the program is open to writers of poetry, prose, creative non-fiction, and translation. The program is competitive; a small number of participants will be chosen.

Participants receive a stipend of $150 and work one-on-one with published authors to hone their craft and build a successful writing practice. The intensive program runs from February to May, 2012.

Apply on-line HERE.

EMERGING VOICES: DALLAS is a local branch of the nationally known PEN USA program, Emerging Voices.

JEN HOFER will be the program’s special guest. Hofer (pictured above) is a poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. She writes letters for people in public spaces at her escritorio público, and makes tiny handmade books at her kitchen table in Cypress Park, Los Angeles.

Winners of the PEN Southwest Book Awards 2011

PEN Texas is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Southwest Book Awards. The winners in each category receive a $500 prize:

FICTION: Small Displacements, by Vanessa Furse Jackson
shortlisted: Randy Lopez Goes Home, by Rudolfo Anaya
judge’s comments

POETRY: Summer Hunger, by Judith Pacht
shortlisted: So Late, So Soon, by Carol Moldaw
judge’s comments

NON-FICTION: Hispanic Immigrant Literature by Nicolás Kanellos
shortlisted: One Page at a Time: On a Writing Life by Pat Carr
judge’s comments

TRANSLATION Special Prize: Soul’s Infarct, translated by Ronald Christ from the Spanish of Diamela Eltit and Paz Errázuriz
judge’s comments

2011 PEN Southwest Book Awards

PEN Texas invites all members of PEN in the Southwestern states to participate in the 2011 contest for excellence in writing in the categories of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and literary translation. The winner in each category will receive a $500 prize, co-sponsored by PEN USA and PEN Texas.

The contest is open to full (regular) members of PEN USA and PEN America living in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It is also open to Associate Members of PEN Texas. Entries must be books published between May 15, 2009 and August 1, 2011. Self-published books are eligible. Translations must be into English.

Entries must be received no later than September 1, 2011.

Please submit three copies of each title and the receipt of payment. Mail to Dr. Tim Redman, School of Arts and Humanities MS JO 31, The University of Texas at Dallas, P.O. Box 830688, Richardson, TX 75083. To pay the entry fee, please use the button below. The site will accept Paypal and all major credit cards.

The books will not be returned. For acknowledgement of receipt, please enclose an email address. Do not send fourth class book rate unless ample time for delivery is assured. Label the package, “PEN SOUTHWEST BOOK AWARDS.”

Open Letter to the Oklahoma Board of Regents

Ladies and Gentlemen:

PEN Texas is writing you to protest what may be violations of university policy regarding the tenure process at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in regard to Dr. Rachel Tudor, who has been at SOSU for seven years.

For some 90 years, PEN organizations around the world have supported the rights of authors such as Dr. Tudor to work free of outside influence, pressure or discrimination. PEN Texas is a local chapter of PEN Center USA, the closest chapter to Oklahoma.

Dr. Tudor is an award-winning poet, playwright and scholar—named the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Writer of the Year in 2000 and given Southeastern’s Faculty Senate Recognition Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2011—and until last month, she was a professor in SOSU’s English department, who, in 2007, made public the fact that she had transitioned from male to female.

The information that we have indicates that Dr. Tudor is still referred to in official SOSU documents as “him,” even though she became a female four years ago. Further, SOSU’s administration has officially ordered Dr. Tudor not to use female rest rooms on the campus and that she must use only a handicap rest room on a different floor from where her office is located.

Dr. Tudor has been advised that a high SOSU official has inquired as to whether he could have her terminated because her transgenerative lifestyle offends his religious beliefs. In addition, SOSU has denied Dr. Tudor the opportunity to re-apply for tenure, despite what we understand to be a record of scholarly success.
Dr. Tudor has been and remains a dedicated servant of SOSU, and currently serves on the Faculty Senate, Faculty Personnel Policies Committee and enjoys consistent enrollment in her courses.

When she applied for tenure in 2009, the Tenure Review Committee, by a 4-1 vote, recommended that she receive tenure and her department chair recommended her favorably. Nevertheless, SOSU’s Vice President of Academic Affairs disregarded these recommendations, without providing reasons for the denial, as university policy requires.

Following established procedure, Dr. Tudor appealed the unfavorable ruling to the Faculty Appellate Committee, which found in her favor and directed the administration to provide Dr. Tudor with reasons for its denial of tenure. To date, the administration has failed to comply.

Dr. Tudor planned to apply for tenure in 2010, but she received a letter from Dr. Doug McMillan, the Vice President of Academic Affairs, stating that she would not be permitted to apply for tenure because it would “inflame the relationship between the administration and the faculty.” Please note that Dr. Tudor received this letter shortly after she had filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Tudor filed a second grievance with the Faculty Appellate Committee, which again found in her favor. Following SOSU procedure, the Committee’s decision was presented to an administration official, with no result. Dr. Tudor then appealed to the SOSU president, Dr. Larry Minks. There were various delays and no conclusion was reached. Finally, the SOSU Faculty Senate passed a resolution, without one dissenting vote, calling for SOSU to allow Dr. Tudor to apply for tenure. Eventually, Dr. Minks sent a letter to Dr. Tudor denying her appeal.

PEN Texas believes that, from the facts presented to it, there is a basis for the Oklahoma Board of Regents to review this issue. We attach a copy of Sec. 3.7.4 of the SE Academic Policies and Procedures manual on promotion and tenure for the Board’s review. Without examining it in detail in this letter, we believe that the clear thrust of this policy statement is that the faculty’s decisions regarding tenure should be given paramount weight. This is evident in Sec. 3.7.4’s first sentence: “Faculty status and related matters are primarily faculty responsibility; this includes…promotions [and] the granting of tenure…”

Dr. Tudor has exhausted her remedies at the SOSU level, although complaints are pending with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Oklahoma Human Rights Commission. PEN Texas asks that the Board of Regents examine this manner carefully, in order to arrive at a solution.

Very truly yours,
Sean Cotter
President, PEN Texas

SE Academic Policies and Procedures manual on promotion and tenure, section 3.7.4:

Faculty status and related matters are primarily faculty responsibility; this area includes appointments, reappointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal. The primary responsibility of the faculty for such matters is based upon the fact that its judgment is central to general educational policy. Furthermore, scholars in a particular field or activity have the chief competence for judging the work of their colleagues; in such competence it is implicit that responsibility exists for both adverse and favorable judgments. Likewise, there is the more general competence of experienced faculty personnel committees having a broader charge. Determinations in these matters should first be by faculty action through established procedures, reviewed by the chief academic officers with the concurrence of the board. The governing board and president should, on questions of faculty status as in other matters where the faculty has a primary responsibility, concur with the faculty judgment except in rare instances and for compelling reasons which should be stated in detail.

Call for Poems for Egypt

PEN Texas calls for poems inspired by the Egyptian revolution. Please join our letter to the writers of PEN Egypt, to demonstrate that the Egyptian people’s actions have our attention and respect. Send your poems through the “Contact” page.

Dr. Fred Turner has contributed the first poem:

The New Nile
Homage to the Egyptian Revolution

When Egypt fed the world with corn,
It sucked the breast-milk of the Nile;
The Pharaoh’s power, the Roman guile
Drank from that plenteous horn.

The new Nile is a Nile of light,
The world’s bright screens, the cellphone’s glow;
The fertile information-flow
Makes fires in the night.

The new Nile is a Nile of tears,
Of mourning for her children who,
Dying in giving, overthrew
The tyranny of years.

The new Nile flows with liberty,
For today tyrants everywhere
Shake in their boots with doubt and fear
They will be swept to sea.

The Power of Poetry: a Writer’s Toolbox event

How can your writing change the world around you? This one-day workshop, for authors of all levels, will show you how to harness the power of poetry for whatever writing you do.

Award-winning poet Farid Matuk will help you create compelling images and memorable phrasings, as you discuss how poetry can contribute to social change. The workshop will cover writing, discussion, and publication.

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Lettermachine Editions) and Is it the King? (Effing). New poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, 6×6, Boston Review, Big Bridge, and What’sYour Exit? (Word Riot). His essays and reviews have appeared in Sentence, Cross-Cultural Poetics, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. Matuk has published translations from Spanish in Kadar Koli, Bombay Gin, and Translation Review. He lives with the poet Susan Briante in Dallas, Texas.

Saturday, February 26
10:00 to 11:30am
McKinney Performing Arts Center
On the Square, McKinney, Texas

$8.00 advance registration
$10.00 at the door
FREE to PEN Texas members.

PEN Texas members may register by sending a message through the “Contact” page.

To purchase advance registration, please follow this link. The site will accept credit and debit cards, in addition to Paypal accounts.

Sponsored by PEN Texas and the McKinney Arts Council

Iranian Poetry Reading: Abbas Saffari

In an evening to draw attention to the situation of writers in Iran, which imprisons more writers than any other country, PEN Texas presents acclaimed poet Abbas Saffari.

He will read on November 4th, at 7:30 pm, in the Southern Methodist University Faculty Club, 3034 Daniel Ave., Dallas, TX. The reading will be in English, with some poems read also in Farsi. He will be joined by Dallas poet Ahmad Langaroodi.

Abbas Saffari is the author of six volumes of poetry. Despite censorship, his work is some of Iran’s best-selling literature. His first book, Confluence of Hands and Apples (Los Angeles: Kaaroon, 1992) won the Sweedish Baran Book Prize. His third, Old Camera and Other Poems (Tehran: Sales, 2002) won the Karmaneh Book Prize in Iran, the first time a poet outside Iran was granted this award.

Read Abbas Saffari’s “Our Story,” which has been banned in Iran: “Things would have turned nasty, had we stayed in paradise!“
–from Words without Borders

Read more of Abbas Saffari’s poems, in English and Farsi, at The Translation Project

This event is co-sponsored by the Persian Cultural Center.

Resolution in Support of SMU Press

On Thursday, May 13, 2010, members of PEN Texas passed a resolution expressing astonishment and dismay at the news that SMU’s office for academic affairs has decided to suspend operations of Southern Methodist University Press. This internationally affiliated group of PEN writers, publishers, librarians, and scholars–many of whom are SMU alumni–hopes that Provost Paul Ludden will reconsider his decision in light of the enormous cultural capital the press has acquired for the university over the past 73 years.

Our PEN members welcome the Provost’s May 19 proposal to recreate the press. We urge the Provost to consider SMU Press as a capital investment in the marketplace of culture. A university press generates for the university, not profit, but prestige. The high esteem of the press has been demonstrated by its award-winning books, its influence on literary taste, and the national outcry following its suspension.

PEN Texas thinks that the annual budget for the SMU Press, some $400,000, should not be the principal factor in determining decisions to suspend such a potentially vital part of the university, nor should the financial viability of titles determine their publication. Rather, such decisions should be based on enhancing the literary prestige of the press, and its contributions to the university’s scholarly identity.

We urge Provost Ludden not to weaken SMU’s national reputation, but to re-energize the press by suggesting new directions for its publishing program, and by soliciting financial contributions for its endowment from patrons who want to see the press survive.