Alumni
Novelist
John Jakes earned his B.A. from DePauw University in 1953. He is the acknowledged contemporary master of the family saga. He is the creator of the legendary eight-volume Kent Family Chronicles, the Main and Hazard families of The North and South Trilogy, and the Crowns of Chicago, German-Americans whose stories interweave the history of the twentieth century in Homeland and its sequel, American Dreams. His 2002 novel, Charleston, returned him to the turbulent years of the Revolution and the Civil War, and became his 16th consecutive New York Times bestseller.
Praised as “the godfather of the historical novel,” “the people’s author,” and “America’s history teacher,” Jakes mingles the lives of his fictional characters with those of historical personages, and involves them in the great events of U.S. and world.
His devotion to a unique blend of strong storytelling and historical accuracy has won him a worldwide audience. More than 55 million copies of his Kent Chronicles are currently in print, along with nearly 10 million copies of The North and South Trilogy. Six of his major novels have been filmed as television mini-series. The first North and South production (ABC, David L. Wolper Productions, 12 hours) stands at 7th position among the 10 highest rated miniseries of all time.
He graduated from DePauw in 1953 and earned an M.A. degree in American literature from Ohio State University in 1954. After completing school, Jakes spent his days writing copy for a large pharmaceutical corporation, then several advertising agencies, including Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, one of the world’s largest. At night he wrote and published short stories--eventually 200 of them, along with some 60 books in genres such as mystery, western, and science fiction.
In March of 1973, Jakes began work on The Bastard, first of the eight volumes of The Kent Family Chronicles. The series, depicting American history through the lives of a fictional family, became the publishing industry phenomenon of America’s Bicentennial decade. All eight volumes were bestsellers. In 1975, with the publication of volumes II, III, and IV, Jakes became the first author ever to have three books on the New York Times bestseller list in a single year. New American Library has published new editions of the series; each volume, the author had written a new introduction.
North and South, the first book in Jakes’s celebrated Civil War trilogy, was published in 1982, Love and War in 1984, and the concluding volume, Heaven and Hell, in 1987. All three were number one bestsellers, and were made into top-rated ABC Novels for Television miniseries.
California Gold was published in 1989, and 1993 saw publication of Homeland, the first of a new cycle of novels about a fictional family in the twentieth century. Homeland was named by the New York Times as one of its “notable books of 1993.” The Crown family saga continues in American Dreams.
John Jakes holds honorary doctorates from five universities, the most recent from Ohio State. In 1995 he received the National Cowboy Hall of Fame’s Western Heritage Literary Award for his short story Manitow and Ironhand, now collected in the anthology of Jakes stories, The Bold Frontier.
Also in 1995 he was recipient of a dual Celebrity and Citizen’s Award from the White House Conference on Libraries and Information, for speaking and writing on behalf of America’s public libraries. In 1996 he became the tenth living inductee of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, and in 1997 he received the Professional Achievement Award of the Ohio State University Alumni Association. In 1998 the South Carolina Humanities Association awarded him its highest honor, for Career Achievement and support of the humanities, and in 2002 he received the Cooper Medal, presented by the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina. Previous recipients include Joseph Heller, John Updike, and Pat Conroy.
From 1989 to 1996 Jakes was a research fellow in the department of history at the University of South Carolina. A scholarly study of his novels, John Jakes: A Critical Companion was published by Greenwood Press in the fall of 1996. The author is Dr. Mary Ellen Jones of Wittenberg University.
A lifelong admirer of the life and work of Charles Dickens, Jakes created a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol for his home playhouse on Hilton Head Island in the late 1980s. Since then the script has been widely produced by university and regional theaters, including the prestigious Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Victory Theater of Dayton, and the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theater Training in West Palm Beach. The script is available through Dramatic Publishing Company. In 2005, he adapted his longer script into a 50-minute touring version for 8 actors, rather than the larger number required for the two-act play. While the original script played a month’s engagement at the Hilton Head arts center, the traveling show was simultaneously presented at 18 school and civic venues in a four-county region. Both scripts are available from Dramatic Publishing.
Novelist
Richard Peck earned his BA from DePauw in 1956. He is known for his prolific contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2001 for his novel A Year Down Yonder. He began his career as a high school teacher, but, much to his dismay, was transferred to a junior high school to teach English. After a while, he decided to cut his career short and write. However, these observations about junior high school students proved excellent material for his books. He said, “Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I was hired to teach them.”
After he graduated from DePauw, he was drafted into the US Army as a chaplain’s assistant and spent two years serving in Stuttgart, Germany. In a 2003 interview he commented, “I think your view of the world goes on—for the rest of your life—as the world you saw as you emerged into it as an adult.”
After his military service ended, he completed a master’s degree at Southern Illinois University and taught junior high and high school English. He left teaching in 1971 to write his first novel, Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt. He has written a book each year since then, totaling 39 books in 39 years.
Peck is a private person “who is fastidious about what he allows others to know about himself. He knows, respects, and honors personal boundaries in ways that are refreshing for someone who grew up in the sixties and seventies, when every little personal thing was fair game.” He currently lives in New York and divides his time between writing and traveling. Peck is an adjunct professor with Louisiana State University‘s School of Library and Information Sciences.
Professor emeritus of English
Dr. Cheng Lok Chua earned his bachelor’s degree in English and French from DePauw in 1960. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and matriculated at the University of Malaya. He attended Université de Strasbourg and was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University.
Dr. Chua's interests include modern world literature, ethnic American literature, André Malraux, and D. H. Lawrence. He co-edited the anthology Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (New Rivers Press, 2000). He is a co-editor of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas (MELA) series of Rutgers University Press.
He is professor emeritus of English at California State University Fresno. His other teaching experience includes: in English departments at the University of Michigan, National University of Singapore, Moorhead State University (Minnesota), and in the Asian American Studies Programs at University of California Santa Barbara and University of California Berkeley.
Essayist, author of short fiction, and professor of creative writing
Susan Neville earned her B.A. from DePauw in 1973 and her MFA from Bowling Green State University. She is the author of four works of creative nonfiction: Indiana Winter; Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making meaning; Twilight in Arcadia; and Iconography: A Writer’s Meditation. Her prize-winning collections of short fiction include In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize and listed as a ‘Notable Book’ by the Chicago Tribune, and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology and in anthologies including Extreme Fiction (Longman) and The Story Behind the Story (Norton.) She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and two children and teaches writing at Butler University and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her new book, Sailing the Inland Sea, was published by Quarry Books, a new imprint of Indiana University Press.
Poet and professor of creative writing
Mark Cox earned his BA at DePauw in 1978 and his MFA from Vermont College. He is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where he teaches modern and contemporary American poetry, international poetry, practical criticism, and literary history. His honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, The Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, and numerous fellowships. He also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) MFA in Writing Program, one of the first low-residency programs in the country.
He says of his teaching, “My workshops place equal emphasis on matters of process and matters of craft, and are meant to offer students the practical exercises and theoretical knowledge that will allow them to pursue individual vision while staying in touch with the collective tradition.”
He is the author of four books of poetry: Barbells of the Gods (Ampersand, 1988), Smoulder (Godine, 1989), Thirty‑Seven Years from the Stone (Pitt Poetry Series, 1998), and Natural Causes (Pitt Poetry Series, 2004).
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
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
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."
Website Author
Scott Weaver, originally from Plainfield, Indiana, graduated from DePauw in 2001.
"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."
