Christopher Maverick, teaching assistant professor in English and DNID, presented his paper, "Have You Ever Tried This One? Sabrina Carpenter and the Pop Princess Sexual Index," at the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association (PSA). Maverick has also joined the PSA's board of trustees, as well as the editorial board of the Journal of Comics and Culture.
Ellen McGrath Smith's short story, "Innocence," appeared in a special election 2024 issue of the Black Earth Institute's About Place Journal. Her poem, "Shaken 53: What is your substance, whereof are you made," was selected by Amy Benson for descant's 2024 Baskerville Publishers Poetry Award, which recognizes an outstanding poem published in the annual journal; descant also published Smith's "Cindy Sherman's Untitled 238" in this issue. The Fourth River published three of Smith's poems—“Thank You for the Lot,” “No Child Left Behind,” and “The Alphabets You Ordered Have Arrived”—this past fall. Two poems, "Where and With Whom Would You Like to Spend the Pandemic?" and "But Enough About Me," have been published in The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: Pittsburgh Poems, edited by Doralee Brooks in her role as City of Asylum's poet laureate 2022–2024 and published early this year. This past spring, Smith moderated and presented on the panel "Artistic Skill or Buzz Kill: Grammar in the Poetry Workshop" at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2025 annual convention in Los Angeles, reporting on ways AI can help students better see the syntactical units in their drafts as they revise.
Kandala Singh, following completion of her MFA in poetry this spring, attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as a Michael Collier scholarship awardee. Her poem, "Four Seasons, Chicago," appears in the most recent issue of Southeast Review.
Carl Sell, an instructor in the Literature program, presented two papers at the International Conference on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan: "“Grail Knights of the Old World: The Knights of Bretonnia in the Warhammer RPG” and “DC's Green Arrow: Oliver Queen, Robin of Locksley, and the Outlaw Vigilante Heritage."
Instructor Colin Williams joined other local journalists this past spring on a Pitt Greensburg panel focusing on media and democracy. His novel manuscript, Bonn, has been named a finalist in the 2025 New American Press Fiction Prize competition.
Visiting Lecturer Cedric Rudolph's work received an honorable mention in Bellevue Review's 2025 John and Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. 
Tina Cafasso, a visiting lecturer, was named a Most Valuable Professor by a Pitt women's lacrosse player.
Marianne Novy, professor of literature emerita, was invited to the Tucson Book Festival this past year, in the wake of the publication of her book, Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories (Temple UP, 2024), which was featured in the fall/winter 2024 issue of T5F. At the MLA annual convention earlier this year, Novy presented "Betty Jean Lifton's Twice Born: Making Adoptees More Visible" during a session sponsored by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Lifton's book. She also presented the paper, "Childhood Play in Adoptee Memoirs," at the Pitt Gender, Sexuality, a Women's Studies and Children's Literature programs' Oh, You Beautiful Doll': Childhood, Gender, Play, and Culture Conference.
Editor's Note: We publish Staff, Faculty, and Grad Student News yearly in the spring/summer issue of The Fifth Floor. You can send your news year round here.