School of Humanities
EGO: The English Graduate Organization
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EGO will offer a series of seminars ranging from paper writing to pedagogy, as well as its annual graduate student conference. Through these activities, EGO strives to help its members build curriculum vitae and develop significant academic and professional skills.
While maintaining its commitment to academic excellence and career enhancement, EGO also values graduate student social life. Events such as a Silent Auction, bowling nights, pizza parties, pot lucks, and pub crawls encourage EGO members to form a community.
Membership is open to all graduate students in the USM English Department. Members pay dues in the amount of $20.00 during their first semester in the organization and $5.00 for each subsequent semester. These fees go into travel grant and award funds and provide food and membership privileges. Dues-paying members will receive incentive prizes. Catered meetings are held on the last Thursday of each month during the fall and spring semesters, and officer elections are held in April of each year.
2023-2024 Officers
Emily M. Goldsmith (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Louisiana Creole scholar, educator, and poet originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They are a fourth-year Ph.D. student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Their research interests include Southern Gothic, Louisiana Creole literature, Caribbean Studies, and Queer Theory. They've presented their work at The International Conference on Narrative, the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Conference, and elsewhere. In 2024, they were awarded the Teaching Assistant of the Year Award and the Innovation Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Research by the University of Southern Mississippi. A Pushcart-nominated poet, their poems and reviews can be found in The Penn Review, LaCr茅ole, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. Their chapbook, Alligator is a Fish, was a 2023 finalist for Two Sylvia's Press and DIAGRAM's Chapbook Prize Contests.
Madeleine Toole earned her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) and is currently receiving her M.A. in English Literature from the University of Southern Mississippi. Presently, she works as a Graduate Assistant for USM鈥檚 office of Research Administration but has also been employed by USM鈥檚 Graduate School office. While there, she acted as a Content, Design, and Layout Editor and the Managing Editor for the 2024 publication of the Graduate School鈥檚 ARETE magazine. She enjoys reading and studying environmental literature.
Lena鈥疜inder is an MA student in creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi鈥痑nd acts鈥痑s鈥痶he managing editor for Folklore Review. She has鈥痯reviously鈥痵erved鈥痑s associate editor for the Mississippi Review鈥痑nd Product Magazine. Her works can be found in Prometheus Dreaming, Crow and Cross Keys, and the鈥疭ucarnochee鈥疪eview.鈥�
Bella McGill is a creative writing PhD candidate at USM. She received her MFA in Popular Fiction and Publishing from Emerson College in 2022 and her bachelor's in English Literature from Ball State University in 2020. Her short story, "The Ones Left Behind," was published in the inaugural edition of Page Turner Magazine, and her novel, Princess and the Pauper, is forthcoming from Wild Ink Publishing in June 2025.
Arleigh Rodgers is an English master's student who focuses on American literature. She has worked as a reporter and editor in Indiana, Nevada and New York, and she received her bachelor's in English from Ithaca College. Her writing has appeared in The Associated Press, Bright Wall/Dark Room, the Las Vegas Sun, and Stillwater Magazine, and she has presented her work at conferences in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi.鈥�
Kathryn McKenzie received her MFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi. She was selected as the runner up of BOOTH's 2024 Flash/Flesh Prize for her poem, "Mummies of St. Michan's Church" judged by Kim Addonizio. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, BOOTH, and Gulf Coast. She was also longlisted for Palette Poetry's 2022 Love and Eros Contest. Kathryn has won the Dr. Jeremy Lespi Memorial English Scholarship Endowment for Poetry, the Joan Johnson Award for Poetry, and the Howard Wilson and Helen V. Bahr Reasearch Scholarship Endowment for her conference presentations at the British Women Writer's Conference (BWWC) and the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference (NAVSA).