October 20, 2009

BCU Professor’s Work Published in Scholarly Journal

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – A short story titled “Gertie and the Visitors” by Tricia Currans-Sheehan, Ph.D., professor of English and writing at Briar Cliff University, has been published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (Vol. 30).

A scholarly journal of Arizona State University in Tempe, this edition of Frontiers focuses on the relationship between place and identity. Editors Gayle Gullet and Susan E. Gray said Dr. Currans-Sheehan’s story shows how those who travel can change identities, their own and those around them, even one as defeated, isolated and heartbroken as “Gertie,” her protagonist. 

Dr. Currans-Sheehan is editor of The Briar Cliff Review, an award-winning national literary/cultural magazine. She has two books – The Egg Lady and Other Neighbor, a collection of short stories, and her latest book The River Road – A Novel in Stories, which is set in Northwest Iowa.

The author has had stories published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction, Connecticut Review, Portland Review, Puerto del Sol, Calyx, Forum, Short Fiction by Women, Heritage of the Great Plains Journal, South Dakota Review, Kalliope, Wisconsin Review, and many others.

She won the Duff Award for the Pursuit of Excellence, the 1997 Iowa Literary Contest, the Nancy Pickard Fiction Contest and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Recently, she won the Headwaters Literary Competition, sponsored by New Rivers Press, for her collection of short stories, The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors.  

Briar Cliff University is a Catholic institution with an enrollment of more than 1,100 students from 28 states.  Students are educated in the Franciscan tradition of excellence in the liberal arts and career preparation in an environment of care and compassion. For more information, please visit www.briarcliff.edu.

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