English Department Calendar

This year’s 30^th annual Mary Ellen & Jim Wayne Miller Celebration of Writing is bringing WKU Professor Emeritus and poet Joe Survant as the guest judge and reader. The evening begins with a buffet and a cash bar; then, Dr. Survant will announce the ten finalists and the winners of the MEJWM Undergraduate Poetry Contest. Cash prizes will be awarded to the winners, and all finalists will receive certificates. He will then read from his latest work (The Stone).

Joe Survant is the author of eight collections of poems—most recently, The Stone (Accents Publishing, 2026). He is the winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press and a recipient of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council, The Asia Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the NEH. Individual poems have been published in Malaysia, China, Japan, Singapore and the U.K., as well as in the U.S. He served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2002 – 2004.

The deadline to enter the contest is 10/25 at Noon.