University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Summary of this year’s program and events by Dr. Phil Harling, Dr. Julie Bursten, and Dr. Tiffany Barnes (“Year Of” Faculty Committee Chairs)

KWLA podcast, Curriculum, features hosts Laura Roché Youngworth and Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby discussing curricular choices with Rachel Weinrich, Goal Clarity Coach supporting World Languages for Jefferson County Public Schools (KY). Topics include: influences on curricular choices, breakdown of the JCPS K-12 World Language curriculum, and overview of the K-5 Fayette County World Language curriculum. If you have an idea to share for the podcast series or an event for the Outreach Clearinghouse, please contact Laura Roché Youngworth ([email protected]) or Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby ([email protected]).

Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”

Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004–2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000–2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship. He presented his poetry at the 2011 TedX Nashville Conference and won a 2016 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. Jess is Poetry and Fiction Editor of African American Review and Professor of English at College of Staten Island.

Jess' fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Beyond The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago's Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry.

Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Bishop, California in 1984. She was raised in the Mojave Desert, in Tecopa, California and across the state line in Pahrump, Nevada. A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno, Claire earned her MFA from the Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, Tin House, Freeman’s, The Paris Review, Story Quaterly, New American Stories, Best of the West, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many others. A recipient of fellowships from the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, Claire was also one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” She is the author of Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, which won the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A Guggenheim Fellow, Claire is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

Derek Palacio received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University. His short story “Sugarcane” appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013, and his novella, How to Shake the Other Man, was published by Nouvella Books. His debut novel, The Mortifications, is forthcoming in 2016 from Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor, MI, and is a faculty member of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program.

Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer splitting her time between Lexington, Kentucky and Sonoma, California.

Q&A with ENS program director Dr. Betsy Beymer-Farris.

This Language Talk: KWLA podcast, Comprehensible Input, features hosts Laura Roché Youngworth and Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby discussing the role of language input and instructional strategies with Jillian Lykens, German teacher in Colorado Springs and Grant Boulanger, Spanish Teacher and 2017 ACTFL Teacher-of-the-Year Finalist. Topics include: world language approaches, proficiency-based instruction, comprehensible input (CI), CI strategies, and comparisons of CI and proficiency-based instruction. If you have an idea to share for the podcast series or an event for the Outreach Clearinghouse, please contact Laura Roché Youngworth ([email protected]) or Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby ([email protected]).

News and Updates for the 2017-18 School Year features host Laura Roché Youngworth discussing upcoming KWLA events and developments at the state level related to World Languages with KWLA President Lucas Gravitt, President-Elect Emmanuel Anama-Green, and World Languages Consultant for the Kentucky Department of Education Alfonso De Torres Núñez. Topics include the upcoming KWLA conference in Louisville in September, opportunities for professional development and advocacy, plans for the World Language Showcase, and news about the Program Review and Senate Bill 1, Accountability Standards, and State Standards for World Languages.

Our eighteenth Language Talk: KWLA podcast, Struggling Learners and Literacy, features hosts Laura Roché Youngworth and Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby discussing research-based strategies to engage at-risk learners in the world language classroom with author and UK professor Francis Bailey (Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language). Topics include: role of memory in learning, cultural disruption, and non-literacy oriented learners. If you have an event or idea to share on the Outreach Clearinghouse, please contact Laura Roché Youngworth ([email protected]) or Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby ([email protected]).

"UK at the Half" interview with UK history Professor Gerald Smith about the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia.