Emelie Griffin, Ph.D., – FSU Integrated Studies Professor – was named the Spring 2025 Black River Chapbook Competition winner by Black Lawrence Press for her poetry collection California Pompeii.
She was selected from a competitive pool of applicants for this national award recognizing outstanding literary work, which will lead to the publication of her chapbook in February 2027.
In addition to publication, Dr. Griffin will receive a $500 cash award and ten copies of the book.
“Black Lawrence Press has published many books that I admire,” Dr. Griffin said. “I’m grateful to the editors for seeing something in my work and giving this collection a home.”
Dr. Griffin’s creative work explores the mesh of self and environment, asking how conceptions of these are formed, undone, and reorganized in unstable conditions.
“I go to poetry because poems stretch to hold complex constellations of experience,” Dr. Griffin said. “A single poem can test the limits of language, enact an intellectual experiment, meditate on emotional response…for me it feels true and natural to acknowledge that these facets of living interact and are not separate.”
This achievement demonstrates that faculty in the Integrated Studies Program don’t just teach interdisciplinary thinking; they put it into practice through their own creative and scholarly work.
When asked how her poetry influences her teaching, Dr. Griffin said, “One thing from the realm of poetry and poetics that I hope to offer our Integrated Studies students is the encouragement to find and trust their own instincts; to follow the threads of their curiosity; and to allow their feelings and unique insights about the world to bear on their academic work.”
Through her teaching, Dr. Griffin invites students to consider how their personal reactions to literature and art can shift their relationship with a range of interdisciplinary topics and ideas.
To learn more about FSU’s Integrated Studies Program, visit cosspp.fsu.edu/integratedstudies