Creative Writing Certificate

Josef Benson offers courses in contemporary literature, African American literature, film, gender studies, poetry writing, fiction writing, and composition. He is the author of Star Wars: The Triumph of Nerd Culture (Rowman & Littlefield 2020), J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: A Cultural History (Rowman & Littlefield 2018), and Hypermasculinities in the Contemporary Novel: Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin (Rowman & Littlefield 2014). Additionally, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in over twenty publications, including: Modern Fiction Studies, American Literature in Transition, 1980-1990 (Cambridge UP), Journal of Medical Humanities, Journal of Bisexuality, Southwestern American Literature, The Raymond Carver Review, Saw Palm, Moon City Review, and The Adirondack Review. He holds creative writing degrees from Missouri State University and the University of South Florida as well as a Ph.D. in literature with a heavy emphasis in gender theory also from the University of South Florida, where he studied primarily with Susan Mooney, John Henry Fleming, and Jay Hopler. He is currently working on two books under contract: The Invisible Costume: Whiteness and the Construction of Race in American Comics and Graphic Novels (UP of Mississippi 2022) and The Sniper: A Cultural Reading of Jeffrey Dahmer (UP of Kentucky 2022).

Erika Leptich grew up in Oak Creek, WI and has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, an M.A. from Mount Mary University and a M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She began teaching at Parkside in 2010. She lives in Wind Lake with her husband, Dean, their daughter, Quinn, and their cats, Misty and Moosh.

Served in the United States Peace Corps in the Philippines (1996-1998)

Gail Gonzalez has a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature. She earned her doctorate at the University of Kentucky in 1992, following a Fulbright Full Fellowship in Argentina. She has traveled widely and lived in Latin America, and has a keen interest in Latin American culture, literature, history, politics and art.

Mary Lenard grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, has a B.A. from the University of Virginia (1989) and a M.A. (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) from the University of Texas at Austin. She started at UW-Parkside in 1998, after having taught at Alma College in Michigan for two years. Her first book, Preaching Pity: Dickens, Gaskell, and Sentimentality in Victorian Culture, was published in 1999. She lives in Racine, has taught at UW-Parkside for almost twenty years, and is currently serving as the Chair of the English Department.

Dana Oswald completed her Ph.D. in 2005 at The Ohio State University. She has published articles on monstrosity, gender, and sexuality in Old and Middle English literature, and on best teaching practices in the university literature and writing classrooms. Her book, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature, was published in 2010. She is currently working on a book entitled Old English Maternal Bodies.

Tara E. Pedersen received her Ph.D. from The University of California at Davis. She teaches Shakespeare, literature surveys, courses in Early Modern literature, The Bible as Literature, Women and Literature, Literature of Science and Magic, and Composition. Her research focuses on knowledge production in early England, and her book, _Mermaids and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England_, was published by Ashgate Press in 2015.

Sarah Piña, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Latina/o Literature. She has previously served on the editorial board for Arte Público Press, the nation's largest and most established publisher of contemporary and recovered literature by US Hispanic authors, and as Research Assistant for the distinguished Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, now celebrating its 25th anniversary at the University of Houston. Piña is the author of several publications on the complex ties between Afro-Caribbean spirituality, gender and sexuality, and US Hispanic literature, including the chapter “Habla Yemayá: El archivo y la etnografía feminista-queer de Lydia Cabrera” in the critical anthology Nuestro Caribe: Poder, raza y postnacionalismos para dinamitar el archipiélago LGBTQ (Isla Negra Editores, 2016).