English Professors of the Conrad Grebel School of the Humanities

E N G L I S H P R O F E S S O R S O F T H E C O N R A D GREBEL SCHOOL OF THE HUMANITIES

Walton Young

Dr. Walton Young, senior professor of English, teaches creative writing (the short story and the novel), American literature survey courses, twentieth-century American literature, Southern literature, and Georgia literature.

His novel A Gathering of Eagles, was published in 2011 and reprinted in 2013. His next novel, Days of Dust and Heat, was published in 2017. The sequel, Kinsman of the Gun, was published in 2019.

His short story “To the Breath of the Night Wind” was a winner in the short story contest sponsored by the Dahlonega Literary Festival in 2005. It was published in Volume 1 of The Signature Series, Golden Short Stories. His short stories “To Hear the Call of the Bobwhite” and “Secret of the Cohullasee” were published in the O, Georgia! anthologies. His short story “Reggie” was published in the The GSU Review.

In 2015, Dr. Young conducted a fiction-writing workshop at the Southern Literary Festival. In 2012, he was on a panel at the Dahlonega Literary Festival that discussed Appalachia in fact and fiction.

His critical essay, “The Cup of Fury: The Preferred Title of Caroline Gordon’s None ShallLook Back was published in the Mississippi Quarterly. In addition, he has presented papers at conferences on the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and William Dean Howells.

Dr. Young received his PhD in English with a major concentration in creative writing (fiction) from the University of Georgia. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Sigma Tau Delta. He and his wife, Suzanne, live in Sautee-Nacoochee.

Connie Nunley

Constance Means Nunley is in her thirty-second year teaching English at Truett McConnell. She has been Degree Coordinator and has taught almost every English course ever offered at Truett. Her creative writing courses have included a comprehensive course followed by spinoff courses in poetry and drama.

Before Truett, she was the Associate Editor of Foxfire Press and helped interview for, write and edit The Foxfire Book of Woodstove

Cookery. She also produced the press’s pamphlet newsletter, Hands

On. Thereafter, she was the editor of White County News for three and a half years, writing weekly news and feature articles and editorials.

She is a native of Clayton, Georgia, and a graduate of Converse College with a double major in English and Studio Art. While there, she wrote for the newspaper and the literary journal and won awards for both her features and poetry. She received her Master of Arts in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she wrote feature articles for The Daily Tar Heel, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia while teaching at Truett McConnell.

She lives with her husband, Bruce, in Hoschton, Georgia.

Nan Allen

Nan Corbitt Allen is the Degree Program Coordinator in the English Department at Truett McConnell University. She teaches English Composition, English Composition and Literature, Creative Nonfiction, Creative Writing for the Worship Arts (music), playwriting, and World Changers (Humanities).

The Gospel Music Association has given her the Dove Award three times for her musical dramas written with her husband, Dennis. Their songs and dramas have been performed across the U.S. and around the world.

Her first novel Asylum (2004, Moody Press) was the feature fiction selection for

Crossings Book Club. Her first non-fiction book The Words We Sing (2010, Beacon Hill Press) is a refreshing look at words and phrases worshippers sing on Sundays but hardly use otherwise. Her second novel Watercolor Summer was released in 2011 by Deep River Press. Her fourth book, published by Broadman and Holman, Yuletide Blessings: Christmas Stories That Warm the Heart, released October, 2013. Her most recent book, Small Potatoes and Tuesdays @ the Piggly Wiggly: Discovering the Profound in the Mundane, won the Silver Scroll Award (nonfiction) from the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association in 2016.

She is a member of and the university faculty sponsor of the English Honor Society Sigma Tau Delta. Nan was the 2019 recipient of Truett’s Faculty Excellence Award.

Nan is a native of Geneva, Alabama, and a graduate of The University of Alabama in Communication. She was awarded the Master of Arts degree from Southern New Hampshire University.

She and her husband live in the lovely hamlet of Cleveland, GA.

Cierra Winkler

Associate Professor Cierra Winkler has taught English at Truett McConnell University since 2011. Her specialties include World Masterpieces, Christian Literature, and Advanced Grammar & Composition. She is blessed to be at Truett, where she can present composition and literature to her students from a Biblical perspective and share the power of story and rhetoric in God’s calling on our lives.

Cierra holds an MA in English from the University of Alaska and BA in English from the University of North Georgia. In 2018, she won the Vulcan Materials

Teaching Excellence Award, and is a member of Sigma Tau Delta, the International

English Honor Society. She is currently pursuing an MFA in TV & Screenwriting from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri and serves as an Intern in Screenwriting at Jim Henson Studios in Los Angeles, a low-residency program that introduces students to writing techniques and theory for television and film, the business of the film industry, and screenwriting history. Cierra also writes for The Skit Guys, a Christian comedy duo, who share the love of Christ in their performances at churches and venues across North America.