The twenty-eighth annual conference of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers met at Ohio State University in Columbus from November 6-9. College professors, high school teachers, journal editors, and independent scholars from the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, and Asia participated.
As usual, our department made me proud! Sixteen current or former faculty, graduate students, and graduate and undergraduate alumni presented papers, moderated seminars, and helped organize the conference. Highlights included Taryn Okuma’s seminar on “Teaching Literature in the Midst of a Reading Crisis” and the Friday evening Literary Matters reading, hosted by Emily Grace, the editor-in-chief of the journal. The reading featured a poetry reading by CUA alumnus, Ryan Wilson, whose most recent books include In Ghostlight: Poems, Contemporary Catholic Poetry: An Anthology, and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations. Ryan’s recent work has been published in 32 Poems, First Things, Five Points, The Hopkins Review, Image, The New Criterion, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review, and his poems have been anthologized by Best American Poetry, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily.
The Saturday evening banquet is always a conference highlight. This year’s banquet featured a reading by Roger Reeves, Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Reeves is the author three collections: Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction and a finalist for the 2024 Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism; Best Barbarian, recipient of the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award; and his debut collection King Me, which won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, a John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a Library Journal Best Poetry Book of the year. His poems have appeared in journals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House. Among other awards, he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, a Whiting Award, an NEA Fellowship, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
In the fall of 2026, the twenty-ninth annual conference of the ALSCW will be held at Johns Hopkins University. In the coming weeks David Yezzi, Professor in Johns Hopkins University’s distinguished Writing Seminars, and I will be putting together the conference committee and assembling the Call for Papers, which we’ll start to circulate in February. We hope to see you in Baltimore for another great gathering of the ALSCW!
English Department alumni: Chris Suarez, who earned his B.A. at Catholic and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (August of 2025); Xiaofang Wong, who earned her PhD at Catholic and is now a fulltime lecturer at the University of Maryland; Lindsay Lawley-Rerecich, who earned her PhD at Catholic and is now Associate Dean and Associate Professor in Liberal Arts at Austin Community College; and Rebecca Vaccaro, who earned her PhD at Catholic and is now a teacher and chair of the English Department at Bishop Ireton High School.
Emily Grace, editor-in-chief of Literary Matters and a graduate student at Catholic; and Matthew Ryan, current graduate student at Catholic.
Three current graduate students at Catholic: Megan Scott, Sophia Giudici, and Abigail Sell; and Evan Hulick, who earned his PhD at Catholic and is now a Visiting Professor of English at Georgia Southern University.
Maeve Ryan, a senior English major at Catholic and a student intern with the ALSCW.
Marissa Cina, current graduate student at Catholic and Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army; Taryn Okuma, the greatest of us all; and yours truly, trying to hang in there every day!
Ernest Suarez
David M. O'Connell Professor of English
Executive Director, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers