Robert G. Barrier, Ph.D. (University of Georgia), Professor of English, has been the director of the Kennesaw University Writing Center since 1988. Over the years at Kennesaw State, he has taught almost all of the undergraduate courses scheduled in composition and literature, but his specialties are nineteenth-century American literature, computer-assisted instruction, and the rhetoric of computer technology. In the graduate program, Professor Barrier concentrates upon the relationships between technology and writing and the history and professional uses of rhetoric. He has presented widely at writing center conferences and national and regional English conferences, and his recent publications include profiles on American literary magazines and interactive software programs for W. W. Norton. Professor Barrier’s current interests include the rhetoric of hypertext, nineteenth-century periodical publishing, the Regent’ test and cultural bias (he has been Regents’ regional coordinator since 1992), and online literary journals (he co-edits The Kennesaw Review). Recently, he has been active in mentoring students for professional presentations and teaching internships.

Laura S. Dabundo, Ph. D. (Temple University), is Professor of English and Director of the Kennesaw State University Press. Her Ph. D. is in English Romanticism, her primary field of interest and scholarship, and she has published two books in this field (Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain from the 1780s to the 1830s [Garland, 1992] and Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters: Romantic Women’s Fiction in Context [University Press of America, 2000], as well as numerous articles and made many presentationsboth in this country and in Ireland and England. In the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program, she has taught editing based upon her experience as book editor, as managing editor of The Wordsworth Circle while in graduate school at Temple University, and largely as a result of professional work. She was employed as an editor at J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, PA, for five years, including a final three-year stint as department manager for the health-science editorial production department (staff of 21, plus many freelance copyeditors and indexers); responsible for the editorial production of 100 books and loose-leaf subscription series annually on a half-a-million-dollar department budget.

Jim Elledge, Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Chicago), is Professor of English and Director of the M.A. in Professional Writing Program. He has published in a variety of genres, from the creative to the scholarly, and his publications reveal his many interests, from innovative poetry to queer studies.

Elledge's most recent volume, A History of My Tattoo (Stonewall, 2006), is a book-length poem. His other collections include The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day (Stonewall, 2002), which is a novel in prose poems, and Various Envies (Copper Beech 1989), as well as a number of chapbooks: Nothing Nice (Windfall Prophets1987), Earth as It Is (Ashland Poetry Press, 1994), Into the Arms of the Universe (Stonewall, 1995), Four Chapters of Coming Forth by Day (1999), and A Letter to No One, Who Is Named “The Past,” and the Thoughts That Interrupted the Writing of It (Street Lamp Editions, 2001). He has recently completed a series of some sixty prose poems that are a fictionalized biography of the Chicago-born outsider artist Henry Darger. His poems and prose poems have appeared individually in a variety of journals, including Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Chicago Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, English Journal, Fiction International, Five Fingers Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Jubilat, Louisville Review, Margie, North American Review, Paris Review, Quarter After Eight, Texas Review, Verse, Washington Square, and Zone 3.

Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, Dr. Elledge has a large number of scholarly interests. Several of his books focus on the work of a particular poet, such as Standing “Between the Dead and the Living:” The Elegiac Technique of Wilfred Owen's War Poems (Eastern Illinois University, 1992), Frank O'Hara: To Be True to a City (University of Michigan Press, 1990), Weldon Kees: A Critical Introduction (Scarecrow Press, 1985), and James Dickey: A Bibliography, 1947-1974 (Scarecrow Press, 1979). Others focus on broad topics, for example A Student's Guide to Getting Published , which he co-authored with Susan Swartwout (Longman, 2002), and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Myths from the Acoma to the Zuñi: An Anthology . (Lang, 2002). He has also published a variety of subject anthologies: Masquerade: Queer Poetry in America to the End of World War II (Indiana University Press, 2004), Real Things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry, which he co-edited with Susan Swartwout (Indiana University Press, 1999), and Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock and Roll in American Poetry (Indiana University Press, 1994).

Prof. Elledge has taught in a variety of institutions and venues, from the typical academic setting to writing conferences across the U.S. His first tenure-track position was at Illinois State University, which he left in 2001 to become chair of the Department of English and Humanities at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY . He joined the faculty of Kennesaw State University 's Department of English as the director of the MAPW Program in July 2006.

Elizabeth J. Giddens, Ph.D. (University of Tennessee), Associate Professor of English, teaches corporate communications, public service writing, and professional and academic editing. In these courses, she focuses on providing students with knowledge of current communications trends and issues as well as the skills they need to work as writers, editors, and communications professionals.

During her graduate school years, Professor Giddens focused on rhetoric and composition and co-authored, with Don Richard Cox, Crafting Prose, a composition text published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. After teaching several years, she shifted into the nonprofit sector where she held positions as an editor and associate director of communications at the Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta, Georgia, and later as a writer and communications director at RAND in Santa Monica, California. In these positions Professor Giddens performed a broad range of communications tasks, including serving as a press liaison, writing policy summaries of research findings, pulling proposals together, and crafting an organization's message and image in annual reports, case statements, meetings, and web sites.

Since her return to academe, she has been investigating how the context of a policy debate influences the contribution that an individual participant is allowed to make. The focus of her scholarship is the rhetoric of education policy.

Tony Grooms, M.F.A. (George Mason University), Professor of Creative Writing, studied at The College of William and Mary, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Speech. His focus was playwriting, and student theater groups produced several of his plays. Next, he studied at George Mason University, where he developed a professional interest in creative writing and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts, the terminal degree for that field. After graduate school, when he moved to Georgia to teach, he found a subject in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Professor Grooms is the author of a collection of poems, Ice Poems; a collection of stories, Trouble No More; and a novel, Bombingham. His stories and poems have been published in Callaloo, African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, George Washington Review, and other literary journals. He is a two-time recipient of the Lillian Smith Prize for Fiction (1996 and 2002), the Sokolov Scholarship from the Breadloaf Writing Conference, the Lamar Lectureship from Wesleyan College, and an Arts Administration Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Though the subject matter of his work varies, his most notable work has focused on characters struggling with the uncertainty of the American Civil Rights Movement. His novel, Bombingham, set against the activism for and resistance against civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, was published by The Free Press imprint of Simon and Schuster in October 2001 (paperback, Ballantine, 2002). Reviewing the novel for the Washington Post, critic Jabari Asim wrote, "In its insistence that 'the world is a tumultuous place and every soul in it suffers,' this powerful, resonant novel offers no consolations. Professor Grooms offers consolation, however, in allowing us to be present at the emergence of a brave and promising talent, fully equipped to take on the writer's task of confronting chaos and wrestling it into form." In 2002, Bombingham was selected as a fiction finalist in the Hurston-Wright Legacy Awards and also won the Lillian Smith Award for fiction.

Professor Grooms's teaching career has taken him to positions at a variety of universities in Georgia, including the University of Georgia, Clark Atlanta University, Emory University, and Morehouse College, and to the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, West Africa. For the past seven years, he has been a Professor of Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University where he teaches a range of writing and literature courses but specializes in creative writing and American literature.

M. Todd Harper, Ph.D. (University of Louisville 1998), Assistant Professor of English, teaches the course in Teaching Writing in High Schools and College. He assists in the coordination of the composition program, and his research interests include the teaching of writing, writing program administration, history of writing and rhetoric, rhetorical theory, rhetoric of inquiry, and writing in the disciplines. Recently, he had a piece on topology, classroom space, and writing accepted for Classroom Spaces, a forthcoming edited collection from Hampton Press. He is currently working on an article examining disciplinary inquiry and style for a collection of essays on style and invention and an article on theorizing service learning.

Robert W. Hill, Ph.D. (University of Illinois-Urbana), Professor of English, has published poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews. For two years, he wrote a weekly column for the Marietta Daily Journal and, earlier, wrote and hosted Poetry Today for six years on South Carolina Educational Radio. He co-edited South Carolina Review before coming to Kennesaw State and since then co-edits Kennesaw Review, as well as edits and publishes occasional chapbook volumes of Billy Goat.

Professor Hill has published criticism in contemporary poetry, especially on the work of James Dickey and David Bottoms and also on novelists Barry Hannah and Mark Steadman, along with numerous book reviews of contemporary fiction and nonfiction. Hill is currently writing poetry, short fiction, reviews, and essays on poetry and movies about the U.S. suburbs and leads a monthly poetry workshop at Haversack Bookstore. He recently led a workshop at Georgia Poetry Society.

David Johnson, Ph.D. (Purdue University), Assistant Professor of English, works in the area of applied linguistics. His research interests include second language writing, second language acquisition, world Englishes, and language policy and planning. He has published articles in TESOL Journal and The International Journal of Applied Linguistics as well as reviews in Applied Linguistics and TESOL Quarterly. He teaches graduates courses such as Teaching Writing to Speakers of Other Languages and World Englishes. He is currently working on articles concerning the role of teaching writing as a process in foreign language contexts, the role of literature in second language writing, and the impact of culture in second language acquisition.

Greg Johnson, Ph.D. (Emory University), Professor of English, has written in many genres, predominantly fiction, but also literary criticism, book reviews, poetry, and textbooks. Sample books include the novels Pagan Babies and Sticky Kisses, the story collections Distant Friends and I Am Dangerous, and the biography Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. Johnson teaches fiction writing, both graduate and undergraduate, and American literature. In 2002, Professor Johnson received the Kennesaw State University Distinguished Scholarship Award.

Carole Maugé-Lewis, M.F.A (Howard University), Associate Professor of Art, has been a professional graphic designer and educator in the field for the past fifteen years. Most recently, she has been involved in Web site development and interface design, completing certification in Internet Specialization and Internet Marketing. She completed the BFA in Graphic Design and the Master of Fine Arts in graphic design at Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and began her teaching career there. Professor Maugé-Lewis has also taught at the Art Institute of Atlanta and at the American Intercontinental University, both in Atlanta, Georgia. She teaches “ Document Design and Desktop Publishing” in the Master’s program in professional writing at Kennesaw State.

Linda Grant Niemann, Ph.D. (University of California-Berkeley), Associate Professor of English, teaches creative nonfiction and is the author of two books: On the Rails (previously titled Boomer: Railroad Memoirs) and Railroad Voices. These nonfiction works chronicle her twenty-year career as a railroad freight conductor. In addition, she has published feature essays, reviews, interviews, and anthologized stories. For many years, she has been interested in Mesoamerican culture and has traveled to Central America as a tourist, student, scholar, and teacher. She is currently working on a travel book about Mexico.

Sarah R. Robbins, Ph.D. (University of Michigan), Professor of English and English Education, directs the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project, a National Writing Project (NWP) site housed at Kennesaw State. Robbins is also director of the Keeping and Creating American Communities (KCAC) program, an initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the development of writing-centered, interdisciplinary approaches for studying community life. With MAPW alumna Mimi Dyer, Robbins co-edited Writing America: Classroom Literacy and Public Engagement (Teachers College Press, 2004), a collection of teacher research essays about the KCAC program. In 2005, NCTE and the NWP published a second anthology of essays co-edited by Robbins and based on the KCAC project, Writing Our Communities: Local Learning and Public Culture. Both collections included contributions by MAPW program graduates.

Professor Robbins is author of Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women's Narratives on Reading and Writing in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture, 2004). She has won numerous prizes for her scholarship, including the 2002 University System of Georgia award for excellence in the scholarship of teaching, the 1998 American Studies Association's Constance Rourke prize for the best article in American Quarterly, the 2003 KSU Foundation award for the best scholarly publication in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the 2004 Kennesaw State prize for faculty scholarship. In Fall 2004, Robbins was named the first winner of the KSU Foundation Distinguished Professor award. She has served on national committees and commissions for the modern Language Association, the American Studies Association, the national council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project. She has lectured throughout the U.S. and in Europe and serves as a reviewer for several university presses, journals, and general interest publishers.

Professor Robbins's scholarship focuses on literacy, authorship, social writing practices and teaching in American Culture. She is at work on a book about Harriet Beecher Stowe's authorial career for Cambridge University Press. With KSU historian Ann Pullen, Robbins is editing the African missionary diaries of Nellie Arnott Darling.

Jeffrey Stepakoff, M.F.A, has been writing professionally in Hollywood since 1988. He has written "by” or “story by” credits on thirty-six television episodes, has written for fourteen different series and has worked on seven primetime staffs, producing hundreds of hours of internationally-recognized television. His credits include the Emmy-winning THE WONDER YEARS, SISTERS, WILD CARD, HYPERION BAY, THE MAGIC SCHOOL, C16: FBI, ROBIN'S HOODS, LAND'S END, FLIPPER, SONS & DAUGHTERS, MAJOR DAD, THE YAKOV SMIRNOFF SHOW, BEAUTY & THE BEAST, HAVE FAITH, SIMON& SIMON and DAWSON'S CREEK where he was Co-Executive Producer. Stepakoff has also created and developed pilots for many of the major studios and networks, including 20th Century, Paramount , MTM, Fox and ABC. And he has developed and written major motion pictures, including Disney's TARZAN and BROTHER BEAR. 

Stepakoff holds a BA in Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill, an MFA in Playwriting from Carnegie Mellon, and has a professorship in Film & Television Writing at Kennesaw State University. He is a current member of the Writers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of Canada, the Screen Actors Guild, IATSE, and is a voting member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Stepakoff currently resides with his wife and two young daughters in the town where he grew up, Dunwoody, Georgia . In his spare time he collects wine and builds forts in the living room with blankets and sofa pillows. His book, BILLION-DOLLAR KISS, will be available on May 10, 2007 at all major booksellers.

Margaret B. Walters, Ph.D. (Arizona State University), Assistant Professor of English, teaches in the area of applied writing. Most recently she developed and taught a new course in writing for the Web and is currently developing a new course in intercultural communications. She also teaches business and technical editing; context, style, and audience in professional writing; and issues and research in professional writing in the graduate program in professional writing; the undergraduate courses she teaches include careers in writing, professional editing, and technical writing. Her primary research is the scholarship of teaching, and she has published several articles and presented many papers at regional and national conferences in the areas of the history of composition teaching, contemporary composition teaching, and on the use of technology to teach writing. In 1999 she joined a consortium of professors in the University System of Georgia in traveling to China’s Jiangsu province for a six-university lecture tour, where she lectured in the areas of teaching technical writing and government writing. She was awarded the 2001-2002 Incentive Grant for Engaged Teaching, Scholarship, and Service Program, Kennesaw State University Faculty Development and Awards, to develop a “Careers in Writing Network,” for which she developed a Web site: The Careers in Writing Network.

Before she became a full-time college professor, Professor Walters gained valuable experience working as a professional writer in several areas of expertise: (1) Aerospace writing: as a Senior Technical Writer and Editor for several major aerospace companies, where she specialized in writing proposals; and as a Quality Assurance, Safety, and Reliability engineer for ILC-Dover (which developed the extravehicular activity, or EVA, suit used by astronauts during space walks) and for Rockwell International (where she worked at the NASA Johnson Space Center on the development and launch of the first space shuttle, STS-1), where her duties included developing and writing various government documents in support of her SR&QA responsibilities. (2) Medical writing: as lab supervisor of the toxicology lab for the University of Texas Medical Branch (in her hometown of Galveston) and as a clinical laboratory technician at numerous major hospitals in the southeast region of Texas, she researched, developed, and wrote laboratory test procedures and manuals. (3) Freelance writing: Professor Walters had a very active freelance writing business in Phoenix, Arizona—the Writing Force.

Ralph Tejeda Wilson, Ph.D. (University of Utah), Associate Professor of English, has taught courses in poetry writing, modern American poetry, and others. He has published poetry, fiction, and reviews in numerous journals, including The Georgia Review, The New England Review, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Schooner, and others. His first book of poems, A Black Bridge, was published by the University of Nevada Press in April 2001. In 2002, he was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry by the Georgia Writers Association. He is currently at work completing a second book of poetry.