Islander Poets Interview Series – Jayne-Marie Linguist

Jayne-Marie Linguist is a TAMU-CC graduate student and poet from north Houston, Texas. Jayne-Marie described her work as very personal, and her poems draw on her experiences coming to terms with her identity as a fat queer woman, grief, mental illness, and her journey into fat liberation. Jayne-Marie’s poetry has been published in the Windward Review. She recently was a featured panelist in the Embodying Women’s Bodies in Writing session at the 2024 People’s Literary Festival.   In this interview, Jayne-Marie…

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Islander Poets Interview Series – Daunte Gaiter

Daunte Gaiter is a senior majoring in Marine Biology from Dallas, Texas who describes himself as “a scientist by day and a writer by night.” Daunte’s passion is writing and reading among other things. He feels that poetry is a comfortable place to express his thoughts. Daunte’s work has appeared in the Windward Review. During the interview Daunte described the connections between word choices, word connotations, and the influence of his own personal feelings in the moment to create poems…

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Islander Poets Interview Series – J.L. Wright

We’re excited to introduce our first featured Islander poet to kick-off our month-long series, faculty member J.L. Wright. She began writing poetry as a young girl, publishing her first poem in the local newspaper at age 10. She has since written three poetry collections, Unadoptable Joy, Homeless Joy, and Unsettled Joy.   In this interview, she spoke about themes present in her three published poetry collections, the origin of poetry and its role as the “voice of the common man,” the importance of persisting during often-grueling submission…

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How to Celebrate National Poetry Month This April

April is National Poetry Month, and there are plenty of ways to enjoy and engage with poetry from now till April 30th! Head over to poets.org to subscribe to Poem-a-Day to get a new poem sent to your email inbox daily and to learn more about National Poetry Month events and programming on a national level. Feeling inspired to write your own poetry? National Poetry Writing Month is a yearly event where participants take on the challenge of writing a…

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The Eras Tour (Bell Library’s Version)

As a librarian and Swiftie, 2023 was a year full of reading, and Taylor Swift. Between seeing everyone’s Spotify Wrapped, and reflecting on my GoodReads’ Year in Review, I had to jump on this BookTok trend with some of my favorite reads of 2023, all of which you can find in our collection. This is the Eras Tour (Bell Library’s Version).

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“Tell me a horror story about…”: Generating Spooky Stories with ChatGPT

Greetings, readers!! There are many things to know about me, but the most relevant for today is that I’m a big horror and true crime fan. The thrill began as a child when I would sit in the center of my parent’s bed (obviously the center - my effort to ensure that if something was hiding under the bed, it couldn’t reach me on that big California king), reading Alvin Schwartz’ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (https://go.exlibris.link/cmRcXzPk). I…

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Book Review, Free Resources, and New Computers!

It's hot outside right now. I mean people are literally moving away from Texas because it's so hot! Thankfully here in the library, we have A/C. I am an indoor person and while I like to go out and experience things, my perfect day out is one where it looks like it might rain. Regardless, stay safe out there - it’s going to be a long summer! Book Review I wanted to review this book because 1: I have never…

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Blücher is a Bad Name for Warships

While many residents of Corpus Christi are familiar with the German pioneer family of surveyors, the Blüchers, the famous family name also lived on in Germany simultaneously. The Blüchers had been landowners and nobility for hundreds of years when Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher was born in 1742, a little over 100 years before his kin would arrive on the unsettled Texas coast. Blücher would go on to match Paul von Hindenburg as the most highly decorated Prussian-German soldier in history.…

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Red Flags: How to Identify Predatory Publishing

What is predatory publishing? The term “predatory publishing” refers to an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not. If you are unfamiliar with the term “open access,” you can read about it in another blog post, but a quick definition of one model of open access, is that instead of having…

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Oh, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays: At-Home Library Resources!

When I used to think of “the library,” I would think solely of it as a physical place: the colorful walls and cozy carpets from when I was little, to the computers, printers, and quiet study areas from when I was in college. However, working in a library has opened my eyes to all the other possibilities of how you can use library resources without having to be at the library! And there are lots of resources and activities that…

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