April 14, 2010

BCU Professor Presents at National Conference

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Tricia Currans-Sheehan, Ph.D., professor of English and writing at Briar Cliff University and editor of The Briar Cliff Review, recently presented a paper for a panel at the Associated Writing Programs Conference, which was attended by 9,000 writers and teachers of writing at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

Dr. Currans-Sheehan presented “The State of the Fifth Genre: Assessing Review Writing in the Computer Age.” The panel consisted of magazine and literary press editors, review and creative writers, who discussed the importance of traditional literary reviews and the relevancy of professional print reviews in the age of Facebook and blogs.

She is the author of two books: The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, a collection of short stories, and her latest book The River Road – A Novel in Stories, which is set in Northwest Iowa. She 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.

Dr. Currans-Sheehan 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. The River Road – A Novel in Stories was a finalist for the Nashville Book Award.

Enrollment at Briar Cliff University is over 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, compassion and openness to all. For more information, please visit www.briarcliff.edu.

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