Contributors to This Textbook

Karin Hooks

Karin Hooks earned a BA in English from Middle Tennessee State University, an MA in English from University of Delaware, and her PhD in English from The Ohio State University. She is a Professor of English at LCCC, where she teaches a range of courses, including American literature, African American literature, Women’s Fiction, Exploring the Bible, Great Books, Introduction to Fiction, and Composition. Her research areas include American literary history, periodical studies, and women’s fiction. Her publications have appeared in journals (Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers; Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature; and American Literary Realism) and in edited collections: (American Literary History and the Turn to Modernity and Yours for Humanity: New Essays on Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins).

Donna Hunt

Donna Hunt has taught at LCCC since 2018. Her courses regularly include the composition sequence (ENGL 093/061/161/162) as well as Introduction to Creative Writing (ENGL 165). Donna is currently a Writing Center Associate, managing the day-to-day of the Writing Center as well as planning both pedagogical and creative events. Her interests include the intersectionality of class, race, and gender in art and literature, and exploring those themes in works from Beowulf to Graffiti writing. She is a published poet, and her chapbook, The Coastline of Antarctica, was awarded the “Emerging Women’s Poetry Prize,” and she won a Pushcart Prize in 2011. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Ithaca Review, and The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, among others. Outside of LCCC, Donna reads poetry submissions for Gordon Square Review, Longleaf Review, and Pencilhouse.

Kim Karshner

Kim Karshner is an English Professor at Lorain County Community College, and she is the Editor of LCCC’s online Creative Writing Journal, the North Coast Review. She holds two Masters Degrees from Bowling Green State University: the first in Literature, and the second in Scientific and Technical Writing. Professor Karshner has been teaching Children’s and Adolescent literature for 23 years. Currently, she teaches Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Creative Writing workshops, Intro to Humanities, Composition, and Technical Writing. In 2023, she published a book called Voices From the Wreckage: Young Adult Voices in the #MeToo Movement, and her poetry can be found in collections such as Quiet Diamonds.

Geoffrey Polk

Geoffrey Polk is an adjunct professor of English at Lorain County Community College. He leads the street poetry group Poetry Free Cleveland, gives K-12 school tours at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and plays jazz saxophone and clarinet. He attended Berklee College of Music and has an MA in English from Cleveland State University. He was editor of the literary magazine Whiskey Island. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Spillway, Brilliant Corners, Cobalt Review, I-70 Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Loud Coffee Press, Voices of Cleveland, The Little Magazine, Context South, Black River Review, and elsewhere. Nonfiction publications include articles on jazz for Arts Midwest Jazzletter and City Reports and interviews of writers including David Foster Wallace, Studs Terkel, and Ken Kesey.

Justin Sevenker

Dr. Justin Sevenker directs LCCC’s Writing Program and the Writing Center. He regularly teaches courses on College Composition (ENGL 161), technical writing (ENGL 164), and mythology (HUMS 271G). With Professors Tammy Bosley and Greg Rivera, he also team-teaches a course on language and linguistics (ENGL 271). In addition to composition, his teaching and research interests include the history of the English language, social justice literature, and mythology and folklore studies. He has published articles on “The Private in Public: The Greatest Performance and the Revision of Testimonial Fiction,” “Making the Most of Networked Communication in Writing Program Assessment,” and “HEL for Composition Studies: Critical Language Awareness.”

Jewon Woo

Dr. Jewon Woo teaches African American Literature (ENGL 266) and Women’s Literature (ENGL 264) among many other courses. She received master’s degrees in Comparative Literature from Seoul National University and in English from the University of Northern Iowa, and completed her doctorate degree in English at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on Black print culture, early newspapers, digital humanities, and pedagogy for underrepresented students. Her essays have appeared in American Studies (S. Korea), American Periodicals, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and J19. Her chapters are published in The Colored Conventions Movements (2021) and Teaching the History of the Book (2023). With the support of Mellon/ACLS and NEH/Mellon fellowships, she recently published OhioBlackPress.org, a DH project on the Black press in 19th-century Ohio to examine how early Black Ohioans built democratic communities.

In Memoriam

Amy Scott-Douglass

Between 2021 and 2024, Dr. Amy Scott-Douglass was a valued member of LCCC’s English faculty and a contributor to this textbook. Before joining this college, Dr. Scott-Douglass taught at California State University Fullerton, Denison University, Georgetown University, and Marymount University. She was an award-winning teacher, and her greatest passion was getting students excited about Renaissance and early modern literature by reading the classics in connection with everything from current superhero movies to popular music. In addition to Composition, she taught courses in British Literature, film, poetry, drama, and Shakespeare. Her scholarly work includes Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars and the “Theater” section of Shakespeares after Shakespeare as well as chapters on civic outreach and the history of stage adaptation theory in Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, children’s Shakespeare in Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, secure-setting performances, stage productions, international Shakespeare films, and 17th-century women authors, including Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and Aphra Behn.