Dear Friends of the English Department,
Welcome to our Spring 2025 edition of Out of Iowa! I write to you as both new and returning chair of the English Department. During my first 3-year stint, I faced the challenge of supporting our students and faculty through a global pandemic. I am proud to say that our community of writers and readers managed not only to survive but to thrive, and we continued to recruit remarkable faculty such as Kaveh Akbar and Tom Lin, both authors of internationally acclaimed novels, as well as an increasingly diverse and dynamic cohort of both undergraduate and graduate students.
Now, as I return on a five-year term, I ambitiously envision us building the English Department of the future. While many English departments nationwide are struggling to maintain enrollments and job placements, Iowa continues to thrive—thanks to our popular English and Creative Writing major and our continued innovation in our graduate programs. Over the next five years, I intend to develop and build on our remarkable diversity of voices, genres, methods and styles, bridging and blurring the divide between critical and creative practices and establishing a community of writers and readers and scholars and critics who reflect, celebrate and critique our complex contemporary world.
Lastly, we would love to meet you in person! You have an open invitation to visit the department where we can arrange for a tour of EPB, a lunch with students, and a meeting with faculty to discuss their current projects.
Loren Glass
M.F. Carpenter Professor and Chair of English
