Dawn Lonsinger
Education
- Ph.D., literature and creative writing, University of Utah
- M.F.A., creative writing (poetry), Cornell University
- M.A., English literature, Bucknell University
- B.A., English literature and photography, Bucknell University
Teaching Interests
My courses include Introduction to Poetry Writing, Introduction to Speculative Fiction, Advanced Workshops in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction, The Lyric Essay, Living Writers, Writing About Place, Monstrosity in Literature and Film, Apocalyptic Literature and first year seminars on immigrant literature, dystopian fiction, and bodies in transformation. I also teach Writers in the Schools, whereby students teach creative writing at local elementary schools and am the advisor for the literary magazine, Muses. I co-facilitate creative writing, organizing such events as a trip to the Dodge Poetry Festival, an emerging writers conference, and the creative writing awards.
I encourage students to become omnivorous readers and passionate writers and to let new knowledge unsettle and transform them. I teach that texts are dispatches from other worlds that offer us a complexity that approximates the textured world we live in. For this unquantifiable information about humanity, we will even walk into the depths of hell with Dante. At the center of my pedagogy is the belief that by engaging with the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Students can identify inherited narratives, imagine alternative subject positions, acquire new ways of seeing and intervene in unquestioned or policed modes of being.
- English Independent Study/Research: Changing Tales
- English Independent Study/Research: Honors Program - Poetry
- Introduction to Poetry Writing
- Introduction to Speculative Fiction Writing
- Living Writers
- Living Writers Workshop
- Masterclass Creative Writing
- Spc: Intro to Graphic Narrative & Comics Writing
- “[ taming ], Rabbit Catastrophe Press, finalist for Good Poem Prize (Issue 14)
- “Fox News, “ Beloit Poetry Journal (Vol 68, No 2 & reprinted on Verse Daily)
- “Antoinette,” Typo Magazine (Issue 20)
- “Famine of Hands” and “Famine of Hands [2],” Indiana Review (Vol 35.2)
- “We Have No Idea,” Rhino (Fall 2015)
- “Horror Vacui,” Still Life with Poem: 100 Natures Mortes in Verse, an anthology of ekphrastic poems about still lifes. ed. Jeanne Dubrow, Rose O’Neill Literary House Press, 2016)
- “Slow Hand {a gothic romance}” and “Holding,” Another Chicago Magazine (Issue 41)
- “Ithaca Falls” and “The Body Is a Nest of Pins,” Crazyhorse Literary Journal (Vol 83)
- “Soft Palimpsest,” “zoo sonnet [vivarium: the museum moves],” and “[but the rain is full of ghosts tonight],” The American Poetry Review (Vol 41, No 5)
- “[rain is a thing that happens in the past],” “Tryst,” “hull,” “She Had No City,” & “My Tongue Feels Like a Wild Animal,” Western Humanities Review (Vol 66.1)
- “[salvaged in asunder],” Colorado Review (Vol 37.3)
- “zoo sonnet [and every creeping thing that creepeth],” Subtropics (Issue 10 & reprinted on Verse Daily)
- “Orpheus XXX,” Sycamore Review (Vol 22.2)
- “four,” La Petite Zine (Vol 25)
- “Honey Me, Honey Hunting,” Southeast Review (Vol 28.1)
- “Bulbs,” and “Median Strip Remains,” Cream City Review (Vol. 33 Issue 2)
- “Slow Saunter of Wither,” Blackbird (Vol. 8, No. 2)
- “Bindweed // Remembering,” Bombay Gin (Vol. 35.2)
- “Incommensurable,” Columbia Poetry Review (No. 22)
- “Emergency Brake,” The Cincinnati Review (5.2)
- “Incidental Love Poem,” and “Backyard,” The New Orleans Review (Vol. 33.2)
- “Centralia, PA,” The Massachusetts Review (Vol. XLVIII, No. 3)
- “The Economist’s Daughter,” Best New Poets Anthology (ed. Claudia Emerson, Samovar Press) and in I.O.U.—New Writing on Money (ed. Ron Slate, Concord Free Press)
- “Sundress” was chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book to be one of 4 featured poems for their Public Poetry Project 2016. The poem appeared on 1500 posters distributed to PA libraries, schools, bookstores, coffee shops, and universities, as well as at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.
NONFICTION
- “An Introduction to Essy Stone,” Tupelo Quarterly, Issue 16, Winter 2019
- “An Introduction to Melissa Crowe,” Tupelo Quarterly, Issue 14, Summer 2019
- “An Introduction to Shauna Barbosa,” Tupelo Quarterly, Issue 12, Summer 2018
- “Basement Complex," Western Humanities Review (Vol. 66.1)
- “consonance," Black Warrior Review (Special “Interruption” Issue)
English Literatures & Writing
Contact: dawnlonsinger@muhlenberg.edu