UH English Majors

On Tuesday, May 5, the English Department honored its graduate and undergraduate students at our annual Honors Day. MFA and Master Chef addressed attendees, and the following awards were given out:

ENGL 1301 OUTSTANDING GRADUATE TEACHING AWARD: Zahra Feizbakhsh Tavana

ENGL 1302 OUTSTANDING GRADUATE TEACHING AWARD: Daniel Raines

ENGL 1301 FIRST-YEAR WRITING AWARD: Ryan Campbel, Xinde Chen, Willa Koziol

JIMMIE KATHERINE MORRIS GENTILE SCHOLARSHIP IN LITERARY CRITICISM: Vincent Fumey Nassah, “Language Identity in Brian Friel’s Translations”

KATHRYN POWELL LEADERSHIP AWARD: Lauren Pennell

EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP: Cierra Aguilera, Lilian Linguist

THE SYLVAN N. KARCHMER PRIZE IN FICTION: Alyssa Box, “Next of Kin”

SIS AND HASTY JOHNSON FELLOWSHIP: Dana Montes

THE BRYAN LAWRENCE PRIZE IN FICTION: Derrick Handy, “Jermaine’s Eyes”

THE BRYAN LAWRENCE PRIZE IN NONFICTION: Aneelah Kauser, “A Life Devoted to Faith and Education”

THE BRYAN LAWRENCE PRIZE IN POETRY: Derrick Handy

THE HOWARD MOSS PRIZE IN POETRY: Alyssa Box

WRITING CENTER CONSULTANT EXCELLENCE AWARD: Leontine Coombs

THE WYMAN H. HERENDEEN AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN SCHOLARLY PUBLICATION: Ibrahim Badshah

THE ZAMORA DISSERTATION COMPLETION AWARD: Nurul Islam

We also recognized new Sigma Tau Delta inductees and the recipients of the following fellowships: Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship (PURS), the Houston Early Research Experience (HERE), Mellon Scholars, Senior Honors Thesis, Fulbright ETA, Research for Aspiring Coogs in the Humanities (REACH) and FrameWorks.

Congratulations to all honorees for achieving such outstanding success in English studies!

Commencement photo dump! It was great to see so many faculty and newly minted grads together at the Fertitta Center on Friday. We were also pleased to see Creative Writing & Literature PhD (2007) receive an honorary degree from UH. Dr. Brown is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University and Director of Creative Writing. In 2020 he received the Pullitzer Prize for Poetry for his book, The Tradition (2019). His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Best American Poetry.

Still looking for an interesting fall course? Check out Prof. Karen Fang‘s new section of ENGL 4379 – Biography and Biopic.

This week at English Honors Day we were thrilled to be joined by Christine Ha – MFA, “Master Chef” Season 3 winner (2012), writer, activist, and James Beard Award Semifinalist. Christine lost her vision to Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO) in 2007 and has since served as a disability advocate, winning a Helen Keller Personal Achievement Award for her work in 2014. Today Christine owns The Blind Goat, with two Houston locations, as well as a sandwich concept called Stuffed Belly. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling cookbook Recipes from My Home Kitchen and has previously served as a fiction editor for . Her work has also appeared in PANK Magazine, Fire Point, and The ScissorTale Review.

Thanks to everyone who joined us at yesterday at the Ice Cream Social. It was great to see so many English majors as well as many visitors. The major for humans is strong!

The President’s Circle Award recognizes UH faculty whose work propels the University toward its goal of becoming a top-50 public university. This spring, the English Department had four of its professors honored. Chitra Divakaruni received a President’s Circle Award for her book, An Uncommon Love: the Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy (2023). Karen Fang was recognized for her scholarly biography, Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong (2024). Kevin Prufer received the award based on his nomination as Texas State Poet Laureate. And Roberto Tejada received an award for his collection of poems, Carbonate of Copper (2025).

presents "Literature You Love," a contest for all UH undergrads. Choose a piece of poetry or prose that you love and highlight it in a 3-minute video. Song, dance, animation, dramatic reenactment, sock puppets, synchronized swimming, or just a simple, beautiful reading of work you love -- anything (appropriate) is welcome. Creativity is highly encouraged!

There will be three $1000 prizes available. Submission deadline is April 30. Scan the QR code on the flyer for submission instructions.

English majors! Our ice cream social returns to celebrate the end of the semester. Enjoy a tasty treat and learn about Fall 2026 courses. The fun begins at 4:00 pm in Roy Cullen 202. 🍦🌞🌷

English majors! Looking to connect with employers hiring liberal arts students? Join for their Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Career Mixer and meet organizations recruiting UH students.

📅 April 16, 2026
⏰ 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM
📍 Student Center South Ballroom

Open to ALL majors. Come prepared with copies of your resume and dress professionally. For a list of participating organizations, see: https://uhouston-csm.symplicity.com/events/fd9a88f01cdbdcadd492f654c207fa19/employers

UH Creative Writing and Literature Ph.D. Raj Mankad, now of the Houston Chronicle, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2025 for his collaborative coverage of dangerous train crossings in Houston.

“I moved to Texas in 2001 to study fiction writing at the University Houston,” Raj recalls, “but I got hooked on telling true stories instead because of teachers like Ruben Martinez, Julie Checkoway and Mark Doty. I remember our hours-long discussions at Roy Cullen about craft, facts and distortions.

“Nearly 20 years later, after many twists and turns, I was hired as an opinion editor at the Houston Chronicle. In 2021, editorial writer Leah Binkovitz pitched a story on dangerous freight rail crossings. Opinion Editor Lisa Falkenberg and I encouraged her to take an ambitious approach to this century-old problem, to investigate the history, the neighborhood-level challenges, the solutions. What she and videographer Sharon Steinmann found was both shocking and familiar: children crawling under and climbing over stalled Union Pacific trains, or trying to outrun them, to get to school.

“In June 2024, we published our first editorial in the series, and it got national attention. Then, in December of that year, tenth-grader Sergio Rodriguez was killed by a train while walking to Milby High School. Sharon and I rushed there. Our urgent calls for action were based in the anguish and disturbing scene we saw firsthand. That series won the 2025 Pulitzer for editorial writing. The Texas Legislature dedicated $200 million to address dangerous crossings including a bridge at Milby. It’s a down payment on a multi-billion-dollar problem.”

Raj reflects: “My job involves a lot of secondary traumas. Every day my thoughts turn to Sergio’s family or other victims of our unsafe streets. I’m grateful for the training I received at UH and the trust put in me to serve on the Chronicle editorial board.”

In other transit-related writing, Mankad published an essay in 2022 about riding his bike around the 610 Loop in order to rediscover Houston following the pandemic lockdown. “After two years,” he wrote, “I was bursting to get out in the world beyond my laptop screen.”