BLACK HILLS STATE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR ACHIEVES PUBLICATION FOR POETRY

SPEARFISH - Black Hills State University congratulates Dr. Courtney Huse Wika, associate professor of English at BHSU, for several recent poetry publications.

Eight of Dr. Huse Wika's poems have been selected for publication this year. Her poem “We Have Grown Feral” will appear in the upcoming fall volume of CALYX, a leading press for women writers since 1976. Her works “Like Wildfire,” “Preservation,” “New World Sparrow,” and “Petrichor” were solicited for publication by South Dakota Review, and “Homecoming, “Museum of Roadside Trash,” and “Butcherbird” will be printed in the spring issue of Oakwood journal.

Last year, Huse Wika’s poem, “This Bird is Trying to Break your Heart” was selected as a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize with North American Review and “The Art of Disappearing” was also named an Honorable Mention for the international New Millennium Writing Awards 50th anniversary contest.

Dr. Huse Wika is an academic advisor of the creative writing minor at BHSU, and formerly served as the director of the University Honors Program and the Writing Assistance Center. With a BA in philosophy and English from Augustana University followed by an MA and PhD in English from the University of South Dakota, she specializes in creative writing and cultural studies.

“A number of these new publications are from my collection-in-progress: a study of illness and trauma using birds as sites of meditation. A longtime birder, I am fascinated by their diversity and the way they negotiate the brutal beauty of their brief lives,” said Dr. Huse Wika.

“The gorgeously organic poems of place, nature, animals and memory in Courtney Huse Wika's Perch are infused with light, sky, and birdsong, and pierced by haunting moments of loss and loneliness,” said Lee Ann Roripaugh, author and former poet laureate of South Dakota.

Dr. Huse Wika has had numerous creative works published over the past years, as well as critical pieces exploring various aspects of literature and its relation to society.