Kelly McKisson is a PhD candidate in English here at Rice University. Her article, “The Subsident Gulf: Refiguring Climate Change in Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage,” was published in September 2021 for a special issue of the American Literature journal, which can be found here. In our interview with Kelly, read about her experiences working on and revising her essay towards publication and how it ultimately took about three years for…
The Wild Grain hopes you all have had a safe and restful winter break. Today, we bring you three cozy book recommendations from three Rice undergrads! 1. The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien One of my favorite comfort books is The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. When read outside, lying in a hammock,…
“A Day in the Life of an English Major” is pretty much what it says on the tin: A look at how the elusive Rice English major spends their time each day. Do they really spend six hours a day reading Mark Twain up in a tree, as the pre-med students suspect? Do they hide out in the library waxing poetic about Sylvia Plath, like the Econ majors hypothesize? Find…
Lily Wulfemeyer (‘20) majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. They currently work as a content strategist for The Pitch, an alternative news publication in Kansas City. In December’s interview, Lily discusses challenges and rewards discovered working in the pandemic, and the rich value of stories and the humanities in the workplace. When did you graduate from Rice? What has post-graduation life been like for you? I…
Electra Woman and her Battery-Powered Headaches by Sarah Roberts My eyes are squeezed tight and suffocating under three layers of blanket as if the pain in my forehead could be snuffed out. But still, the light is blinding, my mind ablaze like glow-sticks cracked a few too many times. I snapped one all the way open once. I remember how the fluorescence seeped out, sinking into palms of my…
“I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives” Ecclesiastes 2:3b This Is How I Drown When I was four, my family went to Hawaii. We did not generally take vacations; in fact, this was one of only three I can recall throughout my childhood. I have come to regard my parents as distant, fantastical planets whose orbits…
“The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?” George Saunders At one point in the eighteen-month period during which I revised my memoir, This Is My Body, I tried to quit. I’d tweaked, tooled, and re-imagined many, many sentences. And these were not just any sentences.…
Welcome to The Wild Grain’s first Outside Reading post! In this series, we will be providing insights on books that members of the Rice community have been reading. This edition includes recommendations from your very own TWG staff; this month’s list features a range of works, from YA novels to Greek mythology. Here is Outside Reading: Books That Changed Your Life. 1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Mitchell’s novel features…
Fairy lights twinkled against the dark bluing night sky as the murmur of the audience drifted in waves, carried by the breeze, weaving in and out of rows of seats, dissipating towards the front, where a wooden lectern stood against the red-bricked background of Rice University’s Ray’s Courtyard. It is here that poet Dave Lucas began to speak. Lucas’s curled hair, thick-rimmed square glasses and colorful shirt caught the eye…
We are thrilled to feature Sarah Easley’s final project from Dr. Castromán Soto’s “Graphic Novel in African American Literature” course. Titled “Molding Clay,” this amazing series of papercut art compositions imaginatively visualizes excerpts from W.E.B. Du Bois’ well-known speech/essay, “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926). Sarah Easley is a visual artist and recent Rice graduate with degrees in Visual and Dramatic Arts and Political Science. Working primarily in sculpture and illustration, Sarah explores…
