Our two Fulbright scholars, Dr Alana Dagenhart and Dr M.K. Foster, will each speak for around 30 minutes and lively discussion will follow their talks. There will be a wine reception afterwards.

Dr Alana Dagenhart. “Art, Poetry, & Belfast: How Place Informs Poetry Writing and Being in the World.” 

In this presentation, Dagenhart will explore how her time living and teaching in Belfast has shaped her own poetry and her ideas about place studies. She will share her Belfast map, an unconventional mapping of the poetic and ephemeral (non)stops she's seen along the way.

Dr M.K. Foster: “Apocalypse Found: Excavating the Flood Epic in Northern Ireland”

In this presentation, Foster will share from her creative-critical manuscript ARKBIRD, a multivalent Flood epic fiction that conjures an apocryphal retelling of the Deluge myth, as set within the 21^st century apocalypses of climate, conflict, and contagion. Inspired by the land, sea, and lore around her, she will describe the influence of Northern Ireland on the evolving shape of her project and its core thesis: “every civilization has a Flood story; we are living ours.”      

Dr Alana Dagenhart is a poet and artist from North Carolina. Her work explores the ties between people and landscapes. She is author of Yellow Leaves (Redhawk, 2022), professor of English at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte, and the 2025 Fulbright Scholar in Irish Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. 

Dr M.K. Foster is a poet, gothic fiction writer, and historian of science from Alabama. Written in tandem, her creative-critical works thrive on a symbiotic relationship rooted in her archival research on Renaissance monstrosity, horror, bodies, nature, and apocalypses. A 2024 MacDowell Fellow, Foster is the 2025 Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing to the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.