The Tusculum Review

The Tusculum Review

We are one of a handful of colleges in the United States that offers our undergraduate students the opportunity to work for an international literary journal. Our journal allows students to learn and refine their skills as reviewers of literature, critics of visual art, and as editors of the written word. Students learn the ins and outs of navigating a publications office, from database management to pagination and layout. These opportunities provide our students with unique qualifications for graduate studies and employment in publishing.

Awards & Prizes

Our students compete for bragging rights and substantial monetary prizes in an in-house literary competition. The Curtis-Owens prizes, endowed by a distinguished Tusculum College alum, are awarded annually in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and scriptwriting. The prizes are judged by established, award-winning writers who visit the campus to give a reading and to announce their selections at an awards ceremony in the spring. Past judges include playwright David Muschell, poet Sally Keith, fiction writer Kellie Wells, essayist Patrick Madden, poet John Hoppenthaler, and essayist Erin Tocknell.  In 2013, Charles Dodd White served as esteemed judge.

Creative Writing in the Classroom

Our students complete workshop intensive courses in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and scriptwriting in addition to introductory and intermediate creative writing courses. Additionally, students present a senior capstone project in a genre of their choosing. Our creative writing students also take interest-based literature courses, including Literature of Conflict, Technology, Science, & Fiction, The Fantastic & the Uncanny in Literature, Literature Abroad, Fairytale, Folklore, & Myth, World Literature, Minority Voices in American Literature,  Genres in Shakespeare, and others, along with hip special topics courses and independent studies created by Tusculum creative writing professors.

Reading & Travel Opportunities

The Creative Writing Program sponsors periodic public readings to showcase the creative projects of students. Frequent open mic nights are hosted at the college.  Senior creative writing students are honored annually with a formal public reading as part of Tusculum College’s Humanities Series. We often provide our students with field trips to attend readings, workshops, and craft lectures.

Many of our students are rewarded with a trip to the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs convention. Our students have attended and have been honored in the Meacham Writer’s Workshop at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.  Students in our program have been named winners and finalists in the poetry and fiction contests of the Lex Allen Literary Festival at Hollins University.

Our program also frequently brings visiting writers to campus to read from their works and to visit classes, affording students valuable opportunities to meet and to work with esteemed working writers like Kellie Wells, Nate Pritts, Allison Joseph, Earl S. Braggs, Charles Dodd White, Adam Clay, Erin Elizabeth Smith, Sally Keith, John Hoppenthaler, Patrick Madden, Katie Fallon, Ken Robidoux, David Muschell, Erin Tocknell, D. Antwan Stewart, Kirsten Eve Beachy, Brent House, Alex Quinlan, Catherine Meeks, and others.

Additionally, students in our program enjoy opportunities to write and travel abroad.  Most recently, creative writing students have traveled to London, England and to Barcelona, Spain.

Student News & Highlights

Students graduating from the Creative Writing Program at Tusculum have been accepted into first-rate graduate programs with excellent financial aid packages, full tuition waivers, fellowships, and teaching assistantships, including (but not limited to): Washington University in St. Louis, Chatham University, Columbia College (Chicago), the University of Central Florida, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Central Arkansas, the California Institute for the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Florida International University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the University of Memphis, the University of Tampa, Georgia College & State University, and elsewhere.  Other students have followed up their undergraduate work with study in other areas of interest ranging from mortuary science to massage therapy.

Some of our students have taken teaching positions around the world; currently, students of our program have acquired  jobs teaching  English in Santiago, Chile and Wuxi, China.

Many of our students have won national awards for creative writing and have published in respected literary journals.

Reed will attend the MFA program in creative writing (poetry) at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reed’s poem, “The Saints Look On La Sagrada Familia,” was selected as winner of the 2013 Lex Allen Literary Festival Poetry Award.

Reed’s poems, “Apotropaic of Induced Insiration” and “Apotropaic of Sameday,” will be published by Glass Mountain literary journal.

Reed’s “Winter Poem” was published in Mangrove and was subsequently selected to be anthologized in plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2012.

Reed’s  “Apotropaic of Giving Roadhead” appears in the Tribute to Southern Poets Issue of Rattle (March 2013).

Reed’s poems, “Testimony” and “What Reconciles Us,” were published in the July 2012 issue of Educe.

Reed’s poem, “Everyone Down Here is Pretty,” was selected by Natasha Trethewey, David Huddle, and Jeanne Larsen as runner-up for the 2012 Lex Allen Literary Festival Poetry Prize at Hollins University.

Connotation Press will publish two of Reed’s poems, “The Locusts of Control” and “The Waking Sex of Brom Bones.”

The Tusculum Review published Reed’s impressive review of Carl Phillips’ Speak Low.

Tusculum College’s alumni magazine published Reed’s feature on using social networking in the classroom.

Sneyd will attend the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas.

Sneyd’s poems, “what you’ve done here,” “We Were Nuclear, Darling,” and “Drunk in the City, Remembering Home,” were published in Burningword Literary Journal.

Sneyd’s short story, “Riding Reflections,” was named runner-up for the 2013 Lex Allen Literary Festival Fiction Award.  His poem, “We Were Nuclear, Darling,” was selected as a finalist in the poetry category.

Sneyd’s short story, “Guarding Charlene,” was published in Spry Literary Journal.

Herron’s short story, “Vigilar,” was selected as a finalist for the 2013 Lex Allen Literary Festival Fiction Award.

Rankin’s short story, “Separation Anxiety,” was selected as a finalist for the 2013 Lex Allen Literary Festival Fiction Award.

Jennings will attend the MA/PhD program in English at the University of Tennessee—Knoxville.

Jennings’ short story, “Excerpts From a Blizzard Survival Guide” was published in Novelletum.

Jennings’ review of Sarah Addison Allen’s The Peach Keeper has been published on The Tusculum Review’s companion website.

Baker has accepted a position at the Shane English School, where he will be teaching English to children in the city Wuxi (located in the the Jiangsu province of China) beginning in the summer of 2013.

Baker was elected Vice President of Membership for the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors (FUSE).

Armstrong attends the MFA program in creative writing (fiction) at the University of Central Florida with a McNair Fellowship.

Armstrong’s work has been published in Connotation Press, Paragraph Line, and Scissors and Spackle.

Pollock attends the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science.

Hill attends the MA/PhD program in English at the University of Tennessee—Knoxville.

Hill’s work has been published in Novelletum and his review of Kim Addonizio’s Lucifer at the Starlite appeared in The Tusculum Review‘s companion website.

Kibert earned TEFL certification with specializations in Grammar, Teaching Business English, Teaching One-to-One, Teaching with Limited Resources, and Teaching Young Learners.  He teaches English in Santiago, Chile.

Broderick completed the massage therapy program at the Sedona School of Massage in Sedona, Arizona.

Connolly attends the MFA program in creative writing (fiction) at the University of Tampa and serves as Fiction Editor for Tampa Review Online and Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief  for Connotation Press, where she also writes the Artisan Review column.

Connolly’s short story “Daphne” has been published in the Sheepshead Review.

Connolly’s work has appeared in Paragraph Line, The Alarmist, Connotation Press, Paper Darts, Scissors and Spackle, and elsewhere.

Connolly’s poetry has been featured in Nicelle Davis’ work for the Poetry in Motion Project in L.A.

McDonnell attends the MFA program in creative writing (nonfiction) at Chatham University.  She serves as an Assistant Editor for The Fourth River, and has published an essay in Connotation Press and an art column for the Pittsburgh Quarterly.

House of Autumn Fire, a play by Roncskevitz, was published by Connotation Press in their undergraduate feature section.

Parks earned a MA in English/Professional Writing from the University of Memphis. She works as a paralegal and writes the fashion blog, The Sequined Spaniel.