Mary Elizabeth Pope
Professor of English

While I primarily teach Prose Writing, Advanced Prose Writing, Fiction Writing and the Writing Seminar, in the past I have taught courses in American Literature, African American Literature, Native American Literature, and South African Literature.
What I Love About Emmanuel:
Emmanuel is a tight-knit community, so students often arrive in my courses having formed relationships that precede their interactions in my classes and inform the supportive environment of their workshops, which increases the quality of work my students produce and often results in student publications.
Ph.D., University of Iowa; M.A., B.S., Central Michigan University; Interdisciplinary Post-Graduate Diploma in African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa
- ENGL 2504 Prose Writing
- ENGL 2507 Fiction Writing
- ENGL 3504 Advanced Prose Writing
- ENGL 3507 Advanced Fiction Writing
- ENGL 4160 Writing Seminar
Short Stories and Essays:
My short stories have appeared in Florida Review, Bellingham Review, PoemMemoirStory, Passages North, Ascent, and many others. My creative nonfiction essays have appeared in The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (Pearson) and Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan (Michigan State University Press), and my critical and pedagogical work has appeared in Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies (Routledge), Language Arts Journal of Michigan (Michigan State University Press), and Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition and Culture (Duke University Press).
My work has also been featured on "Michigan Writers on the Air", a monthly feature on NPR-affiliate Interlochen Public Radio. Click here to listen.
Praise for Divining Venus:
"Mary Beth Pope sweeps you into a world of quietly desperate souls-women and men struggling to find their hearts-and gives them each their own splendid and unique voice. With a deft hand so seemingly effortless it will give you chills, these stories introduce a writer of immense talent and sensitivity."
--National Bestselling Author Jessica Keener, Night Swim
"Mary Elizabeth Pope's collection of short stories, Divining Venus, is a page turner. One wonderful story after another unfolds in this perceptive, engaging collection of such observant tales that it feels as if Ms. Pope has followed you around your whole life and figured out everything about you: your puzzling missteps in high school, your first and often mistaken love, your missed opportunities and chance encounters, your youthful mistakes and stunning betrayals, everything secret and true that has haunted you and made you who you are. Assured and steady, Ms. Pope's writing carries you deeper into yourself, where you will be happy to discover that you are not alone."
--Robin Oliveira, My Name is Mary Sutter and I Always Loved You
"In Divining Venus, Mary Elizabeth Pope has crafted a debut collection with a graceful and plain-spoken unexpectedness, stories in which the small surprises and large heartbreaks are memorable. Like Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, and Manette Ansay, Pope works with worlds in which landscape and family and the world of girls and women are all inextricably intertwined."
-Susan Straight, Highwire Moon and A Million Nightingales
I am at work on a novel-in-progress set in 1940's Arkansas which takes on the effects of poverty, madness, corruption and tragedy on three inhabitants of a small town.
Representation: I am represented by Ann Collette of the Rees Literary Agency.