If you want to be inspired, Leigh Pourciau's classroom at Germantown Middle School in Madison is the place to be. Students lucky enough to find themselves there often are surprised by their own talent as they grow in confidence and competence.
The room is decorated flawlessly: lush tablescapes, original art reflecting a well selected theme, candles, floral arrangements. It is an elegant setting for a 10-course meal, and it could easily be a fine restaurant in New York.
It is about 4 p.m. on a Monday evening and Quintara Wright is busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. The menu: beer braised country style pork ribs, roasted carrots and potatoes and baguettes.
January marks 10 years since the passing of Ruth Hart, professor emerita of Dance. She inspired W students from 1961-80 after living as a professional dancer in New York City and running a studio in Cleveland.
He arrived in 1988 to chair the then-Division of the Humanities. He was excited to be at The W.
All the cities you once knew are gone. Biloxi. Gulfport. Ocean Springs. The Gulf of casinos, water-fronted mansions, seafood restaurants, quickstop gas stations and grocery marts, destroyed and gone. In Michael Farris Smith's novel, "Rivers," (Simon & Schuster, Sept. 2013) the familiar Gulf landscape suffers an irreversible transformation, the product of unrelenting hurricanes and pounding rains that gather intensity and wreak destruction on both the physical and moral landscape.
John Grisham when he was "an emerging young writer." Elizabeth Strout before the Pulitzer Prize came for "Olive Kitteridge." Jesmyn Ward, not yet a National Book Award winner. Natasha Trethewey, twice before being named the nation's poet laureate.
And many more: Will Campbell, Larry Brown, Ellen Douglas, Clyde Edgerton, Ellen Gilchrist, Rick Bragg, Ann Patchett, Mark Childress, Nanci Kincaid, Clifton Taulbert, Lee Smith, John Dufresne, Hillary Jordan, Ace Atkins, Ron Rash, Brad Watson, Kaye Gibbons, Haven Kimmel, Lewis Nordan, Jill McCorkle, Al Young, Yusef Komunakaa.
And the grand lady for whom the series was named: Eudora Welty, a W alumna and herself a Pulitzer Prize-winner.
The Gulf of Mexico was the living laboratory for 16 biology students this summer.
A scrapbook from the MUW Archives by the class of 1913 Student Government Association president, Kate Cunningham, gives testimony to the lighter side of life on the campus of the Industrial Institute and College.
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