In Memoriam: Emerita Nancy Cutbirth Small

Dr. Nancy Cutbirth Small passed away after a long illness on Friday, 27 November 2009. Nancy joined the Department of English in 1971 and retired as Associate Professor with emerita status at the end of 1995. Her career was distinguished above all by the nurturing care that she lavished on her students, by her teaching of numerous courses in Renaissance Literature (particularly poetry), by her editing of The Anthony Powell Newsletter, and by her labors in conjunction with her future husband Tom in organizing what were then annual Shakespeare Festivals sponsored by the Department.

Following retirement Nancy pursued her passions for peace and the natural world. She was an early opponent of the war in Iraq, an early and active member of the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy, and a founder of the Kalamazoo chapter of Wild Ones, an organization that advocates for natural landscapes. She lectured widely and wrote numerous letters and essays advocating for the preservation of natural spaces and all critters that live in, on, or above them. In a sense she never stopped teaching, as those who gardened with her, or received plants from her hands, or sought her advice on what to plant and where and why would testify.   T. H. Seiler

See also the Obituary in the Kalamazoo Gazette. Please also note that the family has established an online Guest Book until 12/1/2010.

Bonnie Jo Campbell (MFA 1998) finalist for National Book Award

Bonnie Jo Campbell is among the finalists for the National Book Foundation's "National Book Award" for American Salvage. Please read the full article in the NY Times.

Bonnie Jo Campbell's "American Salvage" Has Once Again Gained Success

"In her new short-story collection, American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell looks at working-class life in Michigan. Reviewer Alan Cheuse says both roughness and beauty can be found in Campbell's stories about cold, meth-drenched small towns."

The following is the transcript of the National Public Radio broadcast relating to her book:

NOAH ADAMS, host:

From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Noah Adams.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Michigan has been one of the hardest-hit states in the economic downturn. The unemployment rate there right now is 15 percent. And it is among Michigan's struggling working class that Bonnie Jo Campbell sets her new book of short stories. It's called "American Salvage."

Alan Cheuse has this review.

ALAN CHEUSE: Campbell sets most of her stories in a small Michigan town that's been saturated with methamphetamine, a place suffering from a declining Rust Belt economy and all of the usual small-town modern pains: loss of love, splintered families, despair about the future.

Even the happy families, such as that of the yard man, Jerry, and his wife, Natalie, must fight off assaults from invading nature, from ermines to bees to snakes. Jerry can't sleep because of a hole in the baseboard of their bedroom. He's afraid that anything could move into that empty space and lurk there.

That worry turns up in many of the other stories. In "King Cole's American Salvage," an ex-con named William Slocum, Jr. holds up an auto salvage yard owner, beating him nearly to death, all so he can buy his beloved girlfriend, Wanda some meth - to keep herself going, we hear, since she'd lost her job.

In one of the most chilling passages in recent fiction, Slocum presents his girl with a wad of blood-spattered cash.

Campbell writes: Here's your house payment, babe. Look at you, Wanda says, but she was looking at the money. With two fingers, she lifted a $50 bill from the stack and held it away from herself. Willie, this money's covered with blood. Sorry about that. Slocum looked at his hands, which were also covered with blood. We can wash it in the sink, Wanda said.

What these people do to each other can't be washed away. But in these stories about cold, lonely, meth-drenched, modern, working-class, small-town Michigan life, there's a roughness and even beauty.

Few of the stories have endings that seem resolved. Because of their despairing feel and their shape and form, they seem quite lifelike, all too real.

BLOCK: The book of short stories is called "American Salvage" by Bonnie Jo Campbell. Our reviewer is Alan Cheuse. And Alan's latest book is "A Trance After Breakfast."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112651628