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VIRGINIA BELL
2236 Pioneer Rd., Evanston, IL 60201 | 847-492-1050 (home) 301-351-5556 (cell) | virginiabellwriter@gmail.com
EDUCATION
University of Maryland
Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies 1997
University of North Carolina
M.A. in Comparative Literature 1991
University of Wisconsin
B.S. in Spanish and Education 1985
AWARDS
Winner, Three Sisters Award for Nonfiction, NELLE 2020
Honorable Mention, RiverSedge Poetry Prize 2019
Best of the Net Nomination, from Escape Into Life 2018
Finalist for The Lamar York Prize in Creative Nonfiction, The Chattahoochee Review 2016
Finalist for The Center for Women Writers Creative Nonfiction Contest 2016
Ragdale Foundation Residency 2015
Pushcart Prize Nomination, Sibling Rivalry Press 2012
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, University of Maryland 1996
Dissertation Fellowship, University of Maryland 1995 – 1996
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Loyola University Chicago
English Department
Adjunct Instructor – “Exploring Poetry,” “American Literature,” “Women in Literature” 2008-Present
DePaul University
Continuing and Professional Education
Adjunct Instructor – “Certificate in Grant Writing” 2016-Present
Chicago High School for the Arts
Creative Writing Faculty
"Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop" 2016-2019
Georgetown University
English Department
Adjunct Instructor – “Re-membering the Americas,” “Empire and Resistance,” “Composition” 1996-2006
University of Maryland
Comparative Literature Program
Teaching Assistant – “Global Literature and Social Change,” “Literatures of the Americas” 1991-1995
University of North Carolina
Department of Romance Languages
Teaching Assistant – “Spanish Language I,” “Spanish Language II” 1989-1991
RELATED EXPERIENCE
RHINO Poetry
Senior Editor, Grant Writer, Workshop Leader 2008–Present
Poetry Foundation Summer Institute for Teachers 2017-Present
Workshop Leader
Northwest Cultural Council
Poetry Workshop Leader 2008–2017
Poetry Out Loud
Guest Judge 2012-2016
Story Studio Chicago
Individual Poetry Coach 2014-2016
The Chicago High School for the Arts
Audition Adjudicator 2015-Present
Ricochet Review, Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center
Poetry Mentor 2014
Writers in the Heartland
Poetry Judge 2011-2014
Illinois Arts Council
Literature Program Panelist 2013-2014
Chiaravalle Montessori School, Lincolnwood Elementary School
Guest Poetry Workshop Leader 2009 – 2012
Rutgers University Summer Institute for Maryland and New Jersey High School Teachers
Lecturer on Literatures of the Americas 1996-1997
CREATIVE PUBLICATIONS
From the Belly
Sibling Rivalry Press 2012
Pantoum stanza in American Gun, forthcoming from Big Shoulders Books 2020
"Chicken" forthcoming in NELLE 2020, Winner of the Three Sisters Award for Nonfiction
"Poem in Which I Am Laura Linney and My Brother is Phillip Seymour Hoffman" and "I Walk Into Every Room and Look For My Mother," Honorable Mention for the 2019 Poetry Prize, riverSedge: A Journal of Art & Literature 2019
"Sallie Gardner" and "A Blackout and A Meltdown"
Kettle Blue Review 2018
"The Skin Essay"
50/50: Poems & Translations by Women Over 50 QuillsEdge Press 2018
"Speak Easy, or The Archivist Reflects," "Thomas Nestor, father," "Anna McEwan Nestor, mother," "What's in a Name, or Agnes of Rome," "Picket-Line Girl," "Cat-Fishing"
Escape Into Life 2017
"Consolation"
Hypertext Magazine 2017
“If—“
Rogue Agent Journal 2015
“My Mother’s Hands,” “Filial Epistle”
Fifth Wednesday Journal 2015
“Much Madness”
Sitrring: A Literary Collection 2015
“The Man Who Perfected the Disappearing Thumb Trick”
Cider Press Review 2015
“Foregiveness”
Gargoyle 2015
“Mad Lib”
The Nervous Breakdown 2014
“Nino (b.1848 – d.1850)”
Ricochet Review 2014
“How I Became Seth Rogen, Who Shaved His Buddy’s Head with the Same Clippers He Used to Shave His Own Balls”
The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, Foreword Literary 2014
“Three Obits”
Cloudbank 2013
“How To”
Minerva Rising 2013
“The Fourth is Named Estevanico,” “They Called me Una India”
Spoon River Poetry Review 2013
“The Big C,” “Cereus”
Northwest Cultural Council Poet and Artist Chapbook 2012
“The Workshop”
The Mom Egg 2012
“No Words for These Matters”
Calyx 2012
“Learning to Read Porno”
Poet Lore 2011
“Wherever”
Brute Neighbors: Urban Nature Poetry, Prose and Photography, DePaul University Humanities Center 2011
“What Holds Constant”
Wicked Alice 2010
“Skinned Mammals”
Pebble Lake Review 2010
“We Are Here with Our Sticks”
A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on the Inauguration of Barack Obama, DePaul University Humanities Center 2009
“Field Dressing”
Her Mark, Woman Made Gallery 2009
“Lost”
Ekphrasis 2008
“Things We Find”
Contrary Magazine 2008
“What Happened There,” “First Kiss”
The Innisfree Poetry Journal 2007
“No Pope”
Beltway Poetry Quarterly 2006
ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
"A Review of Natasha Saje's Vivarium (Tupelo Press 2014)"
RHINO Reviews! 2019
"Freedom is a Bitch: A Review of Valerie Wallace's House of McQueen (2018)"
The Nervous Breakdown 2018
"A Reflection on Negative Capability in Erika L. Sánchez’s 'On the Eve of the Tepehuan Revolt, November 1616'"
The Keats Letters Project 2017
"The Liquid Sentence: Hedy Habra's Under Brushstrokes."
Blue Fifth Review 2017
“The Turn as Poetic Striptease in Anne Carson’s ‘Wildly Constant’”
voltagepoetry.com 2014
“A Review of Eve Packer’s New Nails (Fly by Night Press 2011)”
The Mom Egg 2012
Instructor’s Resource Manual for Beyond Borders: A Cultural Reader
Houghton Mifflin 2003
Beyond Borders Online, Co-authored with Randall Bass
Houghton Mifflin 2003
“Counter-Chronicling and Alternative Mapping in Memoria del fuego and Almanac of the Dead”
MELUS 2000
“Taming el Dzulúm: Appropriation of Mayan Culture in Rosario Castellanos’s Balún Canán”
Aleph 1993
POETRY/CREATIVE NONFICTION READINGS
The Bookstall, Winnetka, IL 2019
The Book Cellar, Chicago, IL 2018
Oakton Community College 2018
Sunday Salon Chicago 2018
Illinois State Poetry Society, Brewed Awakening 2018
Poetry is Normal 2017
Poets Resist/Evanston Literary Festival 2017
Tiger Salon, Evanston 2017
Tuesday Funk Prose Reading Series, Hopleaf Bar 2016
Glass Lyre Press "100 Thousand Poets for Change," The Book Market 2016
Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD 2016
First Night Evanston 2015
Poets Look at Paintings, Poetry Center of Chicago 2015
City of Evanston Literary Festival 2015
Crossing Borders, City Lit Books 2014
Illinois State Poetry Society, Brewed Awakening 2014
AWP Off Site Reading, Sibling Rivalry Press, Seattle, WA 2014
Woman Made Gallery 2013
WGLT Poetry Radio 2013
Takoma Park, MD Poetry Reading Series 2013
Illinois Wesleyan University 2012
Top Shelf Poets, Powell’s Bookstore 2012
The Ragdale Foundation 2012
RHINO Reads! 2008, 2010, 2012
Molly Malone’s Reading Series 2011
Northwest Cultural Council 2010, 2011
Wordslingers Radio Program, FM 2010
St. Paul Cultural Center 2009
The Café 2008
The Writer’s Center, Bethesda, MD 2006
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Teaching Experimentation: The Freedom in Constraints”
AWP, Minneapolis, MN 2015
“RHINO: 37 Years of Charging Forward”
AWP, Seattle, Washington 2014
“This is not an American Lit. Class”
Midwest MLA, Cleveland, OH 2007
“Waking Up and Turning About: The Problems and Possibilities of Literatures of the Americas”
Guest Lecture, Georgetown University 2000
“Democratic Spaces and Transnationalism in Nineteenth Century American Literature”
Respondent, Midwest MLA, Chicago, IL 1997
“In Search of Bones: Oral Literatures and the Building of National Communities”
Guest Lecture, American Cultures Program, Department of History, University of Maryland 1997
“Multi-Ethnic Anthologies: Re-performing Histories of Antagonism and Alliance” Collaborative Presentation with Deborah Taylor, MLA, Washington, D.C. 1996
“Out of Bounds: The Possibilities of Oppositional Transnationalisms”
“Dialogues Across the Americas” Symposium, University of Maryland 1996
“Counter Chronicles and Unstable Maps: De-nationalizing History in Memoria del fuego and Almanac of the Dead” American Ethnological Society 118th Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1996
“Teaching ‘World Literature by Women’: The Problem of ‘Elsewhere’”
Collaborative Presentation with Ana Kothe and Suzanne Spoor
Central Pennsylvania Consortium Women’s Studies Conference, Franklin and Marshall College 1995
“Narrative Hybridities in the Americas: Rosario Ferré’s Maldito amor and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead” The Southern Comparative Literature Association, North Carolina State University 1994
“Postcoloniality on Mother’s Day, or ...What Ever Happened to Sycorax?”
Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures Conference, Georgetown University 1994
“Theorizing (Beyond) CalibaNation: Towards a Coalition-in-the-Making/Coalition-on-Trial”
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, Claremont, CA 1994
“Mammies, Nanas, and Au Pairs: The Other Mother in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Rosario Castellanos’s Balún Canán, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy”
Women and Literature Colloquium Series, University of Maryland 1993
“Taming el Dzulúm: Appropriation of Mayan Culture in Rosario Catellanos’s Balún Canán”
Fourth Annual Conference for Graduate Students in Hispanic Literature and Languages, Pennsylvania State University 1993
“Reading Rosario Castellanos and Luisa Valenzuela: Rethinking Metaphors of Pleasure”
The Third Area Conference for Graduate Students in Hispanic, Portuguese, and Italian Literatures, and Romance Philology, University of North Carolina 1992
“Respondent to Walter Cohen: What is European Literature Anyway?” University of Maryland 1992
LANGUAGES
Spanish – speak, read, and write with moderate proficiency
MEMBERSHIPS
Association of Writers and Writing Programs
REFERENCES
Available Upon Request.
CREDENTIALS
Complete dossier available upon request.
