Lecturer receives literature fellowship

More than 40 years ago, Cecilia Woloch began writing poetry as a teenager. Now, a creative writing lecturer in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, Woloch was recently awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Poetry Fellowship.

Woloch applied for the fellowship several times before, and when she finally received the fellowship this fall, she said she was not expecting it.

“To tell the truth, I sent the application and then promptly forgot about it — this is a survival tactic, because writers have to deal with a lot of rejections,” Woloch wrote in an e-mail. “I find it’s best to just send things out into the world and … be pleasantly surprised when a positive response comes back.”

Margaret Russett, chair of the Department of English, said that Woloch’s fellowship is a great honor for the department.

“We are thrilled. She really deserves it and she’s been a very productive and admired colleague for a very long time,” Russett said.

Eligibility for the NEA fellowship depends on factors such as previous published work. Anyone who meets eligibility requirement can apply and have their work reviewed, said Jon Peede, NEA director of literature.

“It is an anonymous review process,” Peede said. “Nothing is known, whether you’re a graduate student or you’re an endowed chair.”

Woloch has been a full-time lecturer at USC since fall 2006 before she taught here as an adjunct professor.

She teaches courses in poetry writing, emphasizing the creative work students produce letting them experiment with language and poetry.

Woloch said one of her favorite courses to teach, The Writer in the Community (ENGL 404), allows her to take about a dozen USC students to neighborhood schools and train students to write poetry.

“The results are amazing, and life-changing for everyone involved. I worked as a poet in schools, and created community poetry programs, for many years before coming to USC, so it’s great to have this opportunity to pass the torch to my undergraduates,” Woloch said.

She also said the fellowship will allow her to take some time off from her job as a lecturer and continue on her current project.

“The dollar amount is $25,000, but the opportunity and encouragement it provides are priceless,” Woloch said. “The main purpose of the fellowship is to give writers the time to write, the time to research their work and possibly travel to locations that are essential to their work.”

Woloch said she has been creating a long work in prose that resembles a travel memoir, which attempts to piece together a complex family history rooted in Eastern Europe.

“I’ve traveled regularly to that part of the world for the past decade, and the manuscript I’ve been working on is shaping us as a socio-political mystery, in addition to memoir and biography,” Woloch said.

By this time next year, Woloch said she hopes to have the material for the first draft of her work, at which point she will need more time to analyze and shape it into a coherent piece.

Woloch frequently wrote about family and friends, relationships and the connections people form with one another.

“I’m fascinated with how close poetry can come to describing the mysteries of human life and with the intensity and music that poetry can make of language,” Woloch said. “Something magical can happen between words, and that magic can be transmitted when the words are exactly right.”