Under a clear Australian sky, Michael Majok Kuch stood patiently waiting to reunite with his mother. It was July 2008, and it had been two decades since he had last seen her — since he fled his burning village in southern Sudan in the middle of the night as flashes of light pierced the clouded air, his childhood suspended by a civil war he was too young to understand. Just 5 years old, he dodged death on a harrowing journey through refugee camps and across borders, on a path that brought him to the United States and to a new life.

Professor of English Miriam Kotzin, PhD, recently published a collection of fiction, Country Music, and poetry, Debris Field.

Somewhere in the ridges of Pennsylvania on the Appalachian Trail, a young Christopher Nielson decided that science was no longer his true passion. As he wandered, he thought of the overcrowded chemistry labs he frequented that never quite felt like home. He didn’t miss them. Instead, throughout his whole trip, whenever he had free time, all he really wanted to do was read Shakespeare. When he got back to school, he changed his major to English and he hasn’t looked back since.