R. S. Gwynn, from Volume 2:2

R. S. Gwynn was born in Eden, North Carolina, in 1948. He attended Davidson College, where he played football, twice won the Vereen Bell Award for creative writing, and served as a member of Davidson's championship team on the General Electric College Bowl. After receiving his B.A. in 1969, he did graduate work at the Breadloaf School of English and entered graduate school at the University of Arkansas, earning the M.A. in 1972 and the M.F.A. in 1973. While a student at Arkansas, he received the John Gould Fletcher Award for Poetry. He has also won the Breakthrough Award from the University of Missouri Press and, in 2004, the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has taught at Lamar University since 1976, and is the editor of the Penguin Pocket Anthology series from Pearsona/Longman. His new collection of poems is Dogwatch, from Measure Press.

Below is an excerpt from the satirical essay Gwynn contributed to Volume 2:2 — "Is There Something Ghotiy in This Class?"

          “Wait!” said another student (Mr. B+), a young male with cardinal dreadlocks, dental braces and a pierced uvula, which he would display upon request. “‘Read’ could be a pun for ‘red’; put that together with ‘Kennedy’ and you've got something.  My grandfather who fought against France in one of those world wars always said that Kennedy, who was president back in the forties, was a ‘red.’  He meant a commie. I've been taking an elective called ‘The Red Scare Deconstructed: A Kinder, Gentler Stalin.’We call him Papa Joe in our class.”

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Read Gwynn's hilarious piece in full in Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2!