Stephanie Vanderslice, MFA, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Thompson Hall 336
(501) 450-3340
Degree:
Ph.D., English, University of Southwestern Louisiana
MFA, Creative Writing, George Mason University
B.A., Connecticut College
Teaching Specialties:
Composition - introductory and advanced, writing-across-the-curriculum, creative writing, gender issues and writing pedagogy
Biography:
Stephanie Vanderslice grew up in the suburbs of Albany, New York and the New York City borough of Queens, home of the Yankees, the Egg Cream and the Myrtle Avenue El. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Connecticut College where she studied Developmental Psychology, English and Creative Writing. After college she moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where she took advantage of the myriad of free museums, and,while pursuing her MFA in fiction writing at George Mason University, discovered her passion for teaching college students. Other major developments during this period may be inferred by a joint analysis of her biography and John Vanderslice’s biography on this website. While in D.C. she also worked as a grants assistant for the German Marshall Fund, an international foundation, and for PBS, where she met Barney the Purple Dinosaur at the height of his popularity.
She moved to the Deep South to pursue her doctorate at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette in 1993, where she studied Composition, American Literature, British Romantic Literature, and Creative Writing. Her dissertation was a novel with a critical introduction on the male-female bildungsroman (coming of age story). She began her career at UCA in 1997. Here her teaching interests include first year composition, introduction to creative writing, writing for children and teaching creative writing. She also has the pleasure of directing the National Writing Project of Central Arkansas, a talented professional network of primary and secondary school teachers and writers. Her scholarly essays on the teaching of creative writing have been published in many book collections and journals both nationally and internationally, including New Writing: An International Journal of Creative Writing Theory and Practice, and Profession. In March 2007, her collection, But Can It Really Be Taught: Lore and the Teaching of Creative Writing, coedited with Dr. Kelly Ritter, will be published by Heinemann-Boynton Cook. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in the American Literary Journal, So to Speak, Other Mothering and many others. Currently, she is working on an adult novel, children’s stories and a book on the teaching of creative writing in the United Kingdom. Off campus her enthusiasms include travel, promoting early literacy, collecting children’s books, and flea marketing-junking.