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Writing Lab for
Engineering Students
Faculty and Staff:
About the Director
Writing Program Director, Harriet Levin Millan, is the prize winning author of The Christmas Show (Beacon Press), which received the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America for a manuscript-in-progress and was chosen by Eavan Boland for a Barnard New Women Poet’s Prize after having been a finalist or semi-finalist in nearly twenty first book competitions. Recent work appears in Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Kestral, Dragonfire and other journals. She has been selected as a PEW Fellowship for the Arts disciplinary winner in poetry, two Pushcart Nominations, writing residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Arts, and a winner of a Writer’s Grant from the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been selected by printmaker, Patricia A. Smith for a collaboration entitled, The Crocodile’s Smile, which was installed at the University of the Arts, and by composer Shawn Crouch, who wrote the song cycle, This Morning, based on her poetry that was performed at Yale University and at the Tanglewood Music Festival. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she has taught writing for over twenty-five years from pre-school to adult level and has been a writer-in-residence at workshops at The University of Iowa, Hartwick College, St. Mary’s College, The Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, Rosemont College, New York University, and The University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the boards of Philadelphia Stories, Saturnalia Books, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the National Conference in Peer Tutoring in Writing. In addition to her poetry, she has published and presented widely on the teaching of writing across the disciplines, specifically as a co-founder of DrexelWrites, a Drexel University consulting group, and in engineering education. Her groundbreaking paper on teaching poetry to engineering students, published in the Journal of Engineering Education, has become a landmark approach.
Sheila Watts, has been a part of the Drexel University community since 2005. Currently she is completing her masters’ thesis on ‘Audience and Identification’ for Drexel University’s M.S. Arts Administration program. She earned her bachelors degree from Parsons School of Design in New York City in Fine Arts and Psychology.
While in New York, she held positions in the education departments of both the Guggenheim Museum and Dia Center for the Arts. Her career began in university admissions which gave her the opportunity to work with students, faculty and administrators all over the united states as well as abroad. Besides coordinating the day-to-day operations of the Writing Program, she teaches writing Wednesday afternoons to a class of visiting scholars from the Science Leadership Academy.
About Prof. Cheryl Sucher
Cheryl Sucher is the author of the novel THE RESCUE OF MEMORY (Scribner) for which she was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Fellowship in Fiction. Her short stories and essays have appeared in such publications as NEW WOMAN, NEW LETTERS, THE HAWAII REVIEW and MIDSTREAM as well as the online journals KILLING THE BUDDHA.COM, MSNBC.COM and WOMEN IN JUDAISM.COM. Ms. Sucher graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa with University Honors from Wesleyan University and has a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction from the Iowa Writer's Workshop where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. She received a full fellowship to pursue her doctoral studies in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, where she was a teaching assistant in the celebrated short story class taught by Nancy Packer and wrote her master's thesis on the political literacy of Hannah Arendt. Her awards include the Lawrence Foundation Prize for the Short Story awarded by THE MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW, the John H. McGInnis Memorial Award from THE SOUTHWEST REVIEW, the KENYON REVIEW Award for Literary Excellence and Runner-Up (out of 3500 entrants) in the celebrated Mademoiselle Fiction Writing Competition (first Prize was awarded to Maris Nichols, her friend whom she told to apply.). Over the years, she has been honored with residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers and the Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain. Recently, she won a residency at the Colorado Art Ranch on the basis of work excerpted from her new novel LOST CITIES. In July 1999, Ms. Sucher married a Kiwi (native New Zealander) and since then divides her time between Manhattan and Dunedin, New Zealand. In recent years, her essays and book reviews have appeared in the NEW ZEALAND SUNDAY STAR-TIMES, THE NEW ZEALAND LISTENER, THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD and the OTAGO DAILY TIMES. She is also the New York Correspondent for Radio New Zealand's Saturday Morning Show with Kim Hill, which is a national institution.
About Prof. Jason Wilson
Jason Wilson is the editor of The Smart Set and Table Matters, as well as the series editor of The Best American Travel Writing anthology (Houghton Mifflin). He is also a columnist for the Washington Post’s food section -- his column was recently named Best Newspaper Food Column by the Association of Food Journalists. He has also written for Salon, National Geographic Traveler, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Philadelphia Magazine, and many other publications. He has a dessert named after him in Iceland. He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and has taught creative writing at Rosemont College, Arcadia University (formerly Beaver College), and The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
About the WIT Manager
Lea T. Burns is an English major at Drexel and has been working for the Writing Program for three years. In addition to working as a Writing Intensive Tutor, Lea spent her Co-op as the Assistant to the Director of the Writing Program. With the Writing Program, Lea has participated in several outreach events. In 2008, she was one of two students invited to deliver a presentation at the National Conference for Peer Tutors in Writing at Penn State University. The presentation discussed the University Writing Program’s tutors in training and their involvement with Freire Charter High School students through creative writing projects. Later in the year, in cooperation with the Free Library and One Book One Philadelphia, Lea interviewed and published an article in City Paper as part of an effort to create awareness about Sudanese refugees and “Lost Boys” living in Philadelphia. The piece, entitled “Escape Artist,” focused on Sudanese refugee, Ahmed El Mardi, and his tumultuous journey from Khartoum, Sudan to the United States. Currently, Lea is working to increase literacy programs in and around Philadelphia. She will graduate this June with hopes of continuing work in academia, or in a writing-related field focusing on public service.
About Prof. Henry Israeli
Henry Israeli's books include New Messiahs (Four Way Books: 2002) and Fresco: the Selected Poetry of Luljeta Lleshanaku (New Directions: 2002)-which he edited and co-translated. He has been awarded fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council on the Arts, and elsewhere. His poetry and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Grand Street, The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Tin House, Fence, Verse as well as several anthologies. Henry Israeli is also the founder of Saturnalia Books (www.saturnaliabooks.com).
About Cordelia Frances Biddle
Cordelia Frances Biddle is a novelist whose books include historical dramas and tales of modern suspense. THE CONJURER (Thomas Dunne Books 2007), her latest work, explores the various social strata of the Victorian era in Philadelphia. A sequel, DAUGHTERS OF THE CITY, will debut May 2008. Both have as their protagonist Martha Beale, and highlight issues facing women of all socio-economic classes during the mid-nineteenth century. Cordelia Biddle's other works are BENEATH THE WIND (Simon & Schuster, 1993) examining colonialism during the Gilded Age, and THE CROSSWORD MYSTERY SERIES penned with her husband, Steve Zettler. There are twelve titles in the series; all are published by Berkley/Prime Crime, Penguin Putnam and written under the nom de plume, Nero Blanc. Prior to her writing career, Cordelia Frances Biddle was an actress in New York. She appeared on stage, directed by Jerry Zaks in Albert Innaurato's GEMINI, and on the daytime drama, ONE LIFE TO LIVE as well as numerous off and off-off Broadway productions.
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