Alumni

Novelist

Cathy Day earned her B.A. in English/Creative Writing at DePauw in 1991 and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at The University of Alabama in 1995. She taught undergraduate and graduate workshops at Minnesota State University, Mankato from 1997-1999, and has been teaching undergraduate creative writing at The College of New Jersey since 2000. Her book, The Circus in Winter, will be published by Harcourt in 2004, and her stories have appeared in New Stories from the South, Story, Shenandoah, Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She’s been the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship from the Archibald Granville Bush Foundation and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to attend the 2001 Sewanee Writers’ Conference.  

“My book, The Circus in Winter, was born my senior year in Tom Chiarella’s senior seminar. I had to write an undergraduate thesis (a “masterwork” they called it then), and I had no idea what to write about. Tom said, “You’re from that weird circus town, right? Why don’t you write about that?”  

I was born in Peru, Indiana, former winter quarters for the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. I grew up listening to stories about the days “when the circus came to town.” Whenever I told people about Peru—how my great great uncle had been killed by an elephant, how my neighbors once shot themselves out of cannons—I usually got strange looks. But my teachers at DePauw knew there was a story there. I don’t know if I would have written THE CIRCUS IN WINTER without the encouragement of DePauw faculty members. They taught me to see my hometown with a writer’s eyes. For the next twelve years—through my writing apprenticeship at The University of Alabama, the beginning of my academic teaching career, and quite a few moves across the country—I wrote steadily, learning my craft and my subject matter. Back in 1991, I remember saying to Tom, “I have no idea why this interests me so much,” and he said, “You don’t now, but someday you will.” As always, he was right.”   

A story from her new book

Website Author

Scott Weaver

I came to DePauw as a 19-year old who knew two things absolutely: I didn’t want to be in college and I was going to spend my life writing sports for newspapers. I’m 26 now, in my second year of graduate school and working as a website editor for a national honor society.

I would blame this all on teenage ignorance if the English department of DePauw University wasn’t at fault.

My time as an English major at DePauw was spent wrestling with the question of writing. Was it simply a craft one learned as a sushi chef might learn to roll rice into very tiny, expensive dinners, or was it an art one staved for, bitterly spending grocery money on foreign cigarettes? I never found an answer, though still had to pay tuition.

Truth is, DePauw teaches writing as both. In my four years I worked with professors like Lili Wright and Tom Chiarella who’ve made a living writing for newspapers, magazines, and television. They helped me shape my writing into something marketable, pointed me in directions that might ultimately lead to a career in writing.

Ph.D. candidate in Composition, Literacy, and Pedagogy

Margaret Stahr graduated from DePauw University in 2000 and, as a 5th year intern, worked as the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. Margy is currently working on a Ph.D. in Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; her primary focus is in the area of Composition, Literacy, and Pedagogy.

"When I entered DePauw as a student a few years ago, I intended to major in biology and to enroll in medical school upon graduation. Somewhere along the way, that changed. I became an English major. I tutored in the Writing Center. I realized how much I enjoyed trying to put my thoughts about the texts I was reading into words. Like everyone, I struggled to make my thoughts as vivid and lucid on the page as they were in my head. I struggled to make them more clear there, too.

Fast forward a few years and I’m on my way, I hope, to becoming an English professor. Ultimately, I majored in English – and want to teach English - because I believe it is important to pay attention to words and think hard about what they mean and why they matter.

When you study difficult texts in English, you study them to understand them in some way. And to do that, you have to think and analyze and reason. The challenge in reading difficult texts – any text, really – is determining what meanings it supports and what meanings it doesn’t support. To do this requires close reading, critical thinking, sharp observation, and, ultimately, careful interpretation. These are mental processes that when developed in relation to literary texts can be applied to all kinds of texts in other disciplines and contexts. Graduate programs – law school, medical school, other academic programs - and employers look for students who think sharply. Studying English fosters such sharp, critical thinking.

When you study English at DePauw, you work with amazing teachers. My professors constantly pushed me - and still do - to be a better thinker and scholar, better even than I knew I could be. I admire the way the teachers in this department embrace their work with such vigor and enthusiasm. Even when the papers begin piling up at midterm, they find time to work with students who ask for help. One-on-one and in the classroom, they ask good questions, illuminate tough concepts, and place student learning at the center of what they do."

Staffer for the New Yorker

Matt Dellinger was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. Graduated from DePauw in 1997, and moved to New York that following summer. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works at The New Yorker magazine, where he runs the website (www.newyorker.com) and the softball team. In addition to developing multimedia content for newyorker.com, Matt has written articles for The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Oxford American.

"The first few years working in the real world, I used to wonder if maybe I should have gone to journalism school. I feared I would be lacking in craft. But the tools you really need as a writer--a wide open mind, an ability to talk to people, a taste for hard work-- can be sharpened almost anywhere. DePauw's liberal arts philosophy and student journalism opportunities make it a great place to try a little of everything. I eagerly created, for public consumption: photography, plays, poetry, fiction, radio, reviews, editorials, and a web magazine called "slant." Some of it was very bad. But DePauw provided me the resources, comrades, time, and space to express and embarrass myself. "

Some articles:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?001127fa_fact
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?021007ta_talk_dellinger
http://mattdellinger.com/articles/stateblues.html
http://mattdellinger.com/articles/oldcrow.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/arts/music/29DELL.html