Recent Lecturer Promotions

Ross Angelella, Emily Flamm, Heidi Scott, Radford Skudrna, and Dennis Winston have been promoted to Senior Lecturer. 

Pamela Gerhardt, Mark Forrester, and Caroline Wilkins have been promoted to Principal Lecturer. Candidates for appointment to the rank of Senior Lecturer must demonstrate a sustained record of exemplary teaching and exhibit promise in the areas of research, service, mentoring, and/or program development. In addition to the accomplishments of Senior Lecturer, candidates for appointment to the rank of Principal Lecturer must demonstrate excellence in the areas of mentoring, program development, scholarly research and/or creative work. Principal lecturers are also expected to have a record of service of distinction to the department, the college, the campus, and/or the profession.  

Ross Angelella holds a BA in English Literature with a minor in Creative Writing from Ithaca College and an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. He has taught fiction writing at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City and currently teaches professional writing at the University of Maryland, College Park and screenwriting at Towson University.  Ross Angelella is the author of Zombie: A Novel (Soho Press, 2012), which Barnes & Noble described as “simultaneously a bildungsroman à la Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, an homage to zombies in pop culture, and a twisted mystery all wrapped up into one utterly original—and darkly delightful—novel” and Matthew Quick (author of The Silver Linings Playbook) called “an irreverent and twisted coming-of-age story with one of the most shocking endings I’ve ever read.”  Angelella's journalism, essays and award-winning short fiction have appeared in various journals, including The Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Sou'wester, JMWW, The Collagist, The Nervous Breakdown and Fiction Writers’ Review. His short story "Sauce" won The Coachella Review's grand prize in 2012.

Emily Flamm has an M.F.A. in fiction writing from University of Maryland (2013) and a B.A. in journalism (Arizona State University, 2004). She worked for several years in Washington, D.C., and Phoenix, Arizona as a magazine writer and editor. Her fiction has appeared in Catapult, Carve Magazine, Territory, Crab Orchard Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Her nonfiction and reporting have been published in The Washington Post, Washington Spaces, America West, and elsewhere.

Heidi Scott received her MA and PhD in English from the University of Maryland (2009). Since Fall 2016, Dr. Scott has taught a range of courses for our department, including courses in 18th and 19th century British literature, scriptwriting, writing for nonprofits, and a course on women and comedy.  Dr. Scott is the author of two books, Chaos and Cosmos: Literary Origins of Modern Ecology in the British Nineteenth Century (Pennsylvania State UP, 2014) and Fuel: An Ecocritical History (Bloomsbury, 2018), as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles and essays. Additionally, she is the author of four feature-length film scripts. In 2018 she directed a short version of her script "Landfill" (now in post-production), worked as Assistant Director on another short film, and received sponsorship to turn one of her scripts into a stage play -- now an ongoing collaboration with a local playwright.  

Radford Skudrna earned his MFA at the University of Maryland, where he currently teaches. He has served as a Lannan Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, editor for Roger and Interpolations, and is member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. His writing has appeared in Mount Hope, Steam Ticket, Gravel, Agave Magazine, Split Rock Review, The Missing Slate, Bayou Magazine, and Barely South Review, among other publications.

Dennis Winston earned his M.A. in English from North Carolina A&T, and Ph.D. in English and African American Literature from Texas A & M University (2012). Since 2012, he has been teaching as a Lecturer at Howard University. He joined the English Department at UMD in Fall 2018. At Howard, Dr. Winston contributed in substantive ways to the redesign their first-year writing program, with a particular focus on inclusion, diversity, access, and equity. Dr. Winston is an active scholar with specialties in hip-hop literacies and African American literature. His book manuscript "Crack Rap: How Drug Deals and Street Crime Changed Black Literature Forever" is currently under review with Palgrave Macmillan. He has several essays in progress and under review, as well as a published essay entitled "(Re)Writing the 'Bad Nigger' Hero in Robert Beck's Pimp" in a volume dedicated to representations of race and urban landscape. He regularly presents his work at academic conferences, is the former Managing Editor and current Editor-in-Chief of Words; Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip Hop, and a published poet.

Pamela Gerhardt has written professionally for 25 years for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and The Sun. Her memoir, Lucky That Way, was published by University of Missouri Press in 2013. An excerpt appeared in the June 2008 issue of The Washington Post Sunday Magazine, and a companion story appeared in The Washington Post "Health and Science" section in August, 2011. Lucky That Way won the 2014 American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Outstanding Book Prize in the memoir category. She has appeared as a guest on ABC's Nightline. Ms. Gerhardt's has worked as an editor for both literary and consumer magazines, including a five-year stint with Whittle Communications, publisher of Esquire. As a professional writing instructor/consultant she has worked for NASA, The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, The American Chemical Society, and Shire Pharmaceutical, USA. She received an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University (1993) and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism (1983) and has taught advanced writing and editing classes at Virginia Commonwealth University, Johns Hopkins University, and Texas A&M University. She currently teaches Narrative Nonfiction in the Professional Writing Program and was the Assistant Director for the Program from 2007 to 2011.   

Mark Forrester has an M.A. from the University of Maryland and has taught literature and composition courses at the University of Maryland since 1994 and has been with the Professional Writing Program since 2004, serving as an Administrative Fellow for the program from 2011 to 2018. His interests include haiku and poetic metaphor. He has presented papers at several academic conferences, his fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of literary journals, and his chapter on Anthony Trollope was published in the collection Imperial Desire: Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2003). In 2014, Mark was selected as a recipient of the Philip Merrill Presidential Scholars award for mentorship.

Caroline Wilkins has taught in the Professional Writing Program since 1999 and in the English Department since 1991. Ms. Wilkins has taught many courses including English 241, Introduction to the Novel; English 250, Women’s Literature; and English 201, Western World Literature. In addition, she has taught many sections of English 101, including sections in the College Park Scholars Program. She studied literature at Wesleyan University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. Her research interests include critical theory, feminist theory, and contemporary literature. She has presented at many conferences on topics as varied as transgression and visuality, Harold Pinter, and 18th Century women’s literature. Ms. Wilkins has an MA in English from the University of Maryland.