Gabriel Gudding and Duriel Harris of Illinois State University’s Department of English are the recipients of the Outstanding University Creative Activity Award, and Kevin Rich of Illinois State’s School of Theatre and Dance is the recipient of the Creative Activity Intiative Award. The three will be honored at the University’s Founders Day Convocation on Thursday, February 18.
The Outstanding University Creative Activity Award recognizes outstanding, sustained, and widely recognized creative contributions to fields such as painting, sculpture, film, drama, musical composition, choreography, poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and creative media programming.
Gabriel Gudding
Associate Professor Gabriel Gudding’s portfolio includes three books of poetry and creative non-fiction, as well as numerous poems, essays, and translations in anthologies and peer-reviewed periodicals. “Professor Gudding has enriched the Department of English and brought prestige to the University through the international reputation he has built as a poet, essayist, translator, and more recently, an influential thinker and writer in the field of ecocriticism and ecopoetics,” said Department of English Chair Chris DeSantis. Gudding earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Cornell University in 2000. He joined the Department of English in 2002.
Duriel Estelle Harris
Associate Professor Duriel Harris’ many works include books, videos, sound recordings, multimedia, and performance art presentations. “The scholar Michael Antonucci places Professor Harris among the most important writers in the African-American literary tradition,” said DeSantis. “He also points to the prestigious nature of her publication outlets as a sign of the rigor which accompanies her prolific nature.” Harris is the editor of the journal, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Program for Writers and joined the Department of English in 2009.
The Outstanding Activity Initiative Award recognizes faculty members who have initiated promising creative productivity early in their academic careers. Those creative contributions come in fields such as painting, sculpture, film, drama, musical composition, choreography, poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and creative media programming.
Kevin Rich
Assistant Professor Kevin Rich is the artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. In that role, Rich has worked to make the classical plays accessible to contemporary audiences of all ages and develop new work in the spirit of Shakespeare’s plays. Under his direction, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival has staged an all-male, original-practices production of Much Ado About Nothing, new plays such as Failure: A Love Story, Love’s Labor’s Won, and a hip hop adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and initiated the popular Halloween production ShakesFEAR.
The Festival’s 2016 season will include Hamlet, starring Deb Staples in the title role. Rich holds a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College and master’s degree from Yale School of Drama.
