The Florida State University English department honored 26 undergraduate and graduate students April 20 during the annual awards ceremony for their exceptional writing and work.

Florida State University alumnus Bobbie Cavnar, who graduated from FSU in 1999, is one of those teachers. In mid-February 2018, the National Endowment for the Arts Foundation named Cavnar the Nation’s Best Teacher for 2018.

Students who are earning advanced academic degrees find many ways to enhance their research and scholarship. They rely on professors to mentor them and guide them through the process.

As the collection of poetry and literature stacked on Kaveh Akbar’s desk grows, so does his mind. He regularly has conversations between his own voice and with the writers of the countless books he keeps nearby.

Born and raised in Tallahassee, Yolanda Franklin earned both her undergraduate degree and a PhD in English from Florida State University. Her new book of poetry Blood Vinyls (July 2018) is available for pre-order through Anhinga Press.

When Dorothy Chan was an undergraduate at Cornell University, she met with one of her advisors, Associate Professor of English Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, to discuss the process for applying to graduate programs. Chan specifically asked if she should cater the package of poems she sent with her applications to the specific schools.

Taylor Clement, a doctoral candidate in Renaissance Literature and History of Text Technologies, has been awarded a 2017-18 Mellon/American Council of Learned Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

Catherine Deborah Davidson-Hiers fascinated with people's connection to food, culture. Audrey Wheeler eager to tell the story of Caroline Crane Marsh.

When Misha Rai was a teenager, at an all-girls boarding school in India, she and her friends would secretly smuggle and read romance novels despite them being banned by the nuns. A combination of her clandestine love for this type of writing and her other literary obsession, detective novels, resulted in a very odd early ambition.

Cocoa Williams, a Ph.D. student in the English department at Florida State University, is a 2016 recipient of the Philanthropic Education Organization Scholar Award, a $15,000 merit-based honor for women pursuing doctoral degrees.