Dr. Gary C. Wilkens
Associate Professor
273 Madison Hall
(757) 823-2956
gcwilkens@nsu.edu
Education:
B.A. -- Hendrix College (Philosophy, with Distinction)
M.A. -- Sam Houston State University (English, Concentration in Creative Writing)
Ph.D. -- The University of Southern Mississippi (Literature and Creative Writing)
Research Interests:
Creative Writing, Fiction and Poetry (esp. genre fiction)
Creative Writing Pedagogy
Science Fiction (esp. pulp SF magazines)
20th Century American Poetry
Composition and Rhetoric
BIO
Born in Charleston, South Carolina and raised in various places in the American South, Dr. Gary Charles Wilkens earned a B.A with Distinction in Philosophy from Hendrix College in 1999, his Masters in English from Sam Houston State University in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Literature and
Creative Writing from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2010. Before coming to NSU, he was Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University Institute of Technology.
He is the author of The Red Light Was My Mind (2007), winner of the Texas Review Press Poetry Breakthrough Series Prize in 2006. His poems have also appeared in over 40 journals and anthologies, both in print and online. His areas of specialty are creative writing, particularly poetry and drama, and 20th century American literature, particularly Anglo-American Modernism, contemporary poetry, and science fiction. His current research areas include publishing his poetry in journals, finding a publisher for his second full-length poetry
manuscript, and finishing his first sci-fi novel, as well as academic research on 1950s sci-fi magazines and their influence on the development of the genre.
His favorite novelists are Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Anson Heinlein, and Virginia Woolf, and his favorite poets include Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, and Philip Larkin.