Published: October 12, 2007 08:20 pm         

Merrifield joins English Dept. at Potomac State

KEYSER — Potomac State College of West Virginia University announces the appointment of Jennifer Merrifield to the position of visiting instructor of English at the college.

Merrifield earned her master’s in fine arts, with a concentration in poetry, from Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English and sociology from WVU and also attended the Harvard University Secondary School Program.

Previously, Merrifield served as an English instructor at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Va. She has worked with Activities for Life/GEAR UP Program at Frostburg State University and was a graduate teaching assistant at VCU in Richmond, Va., where she developed and piloted VCU’s first Writing Center Online with 125 undergraduate participants. Merrifield also currently teaches creative writing at Penn State Fayette.

Merrifield served as co-president of the Graduate Writers Association, designing and implementing workshops, lecture series and a monthly graduate reading series. She has served as a teaching assistant at The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in Baltimore, and led a poetry workshop at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.

Merrifield currently has a poetry collection, American Proper, under review for publication and two other works in-progress, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, (a collection of poems), and an anthology, The Fifty States of Poetry.

She has been the recipient of various honors and awards including: winner of the 2006 Columbia Poetry Prize; received the Editor’s Choice Award with 42opus, an online magazine of the literary arts; was named a featured emerging writer with Natural Bridge for 2007; a nominee for Best New Poets in 2007; and a finalist in the 2006 Greg Grummer Poetry Award; the 2006 Stephen Dunn Poetry Award and the Seattle Review.

Merrifield has been published in numerous journals and anthologies and received editorial and publishing experience as well. She has given academic presentations and retains professional membership in the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Modern Language Association and the Poetry Society of America. She is a native of Fairmont.