Alumni Updates

We post alumni notes as we receive them. Use our handy form to send us your news!

For updates received in previous years, check out the categories of class years in the left menu.

Martha Hunt – '70 I taught high school English for half a year and then took a different path. I earned an M.Ed from the University of Virginia in Special Education with an endorsement to teach students with behavioral and emotional handicaps. I taught in state institutions for six years and then in the late 70's moved into the local public schools in New Hampshire consulting with teachers of students with emotional handicaps. Later I taught in a public school program with a focus on returning students with these handicaps to regular classrooms. After twenty years, I earned an M.Ed in supervision and administration at the University of New Hampshire and became an elementary school principal. I also earned an endorsement in elementary education at a small private college in New Hampshire. I was a very good teacher, but an excellent principal. I served in two principalships and retired in June, 2006. I am now on the steering committee of the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty returning to the civic activism of my years at the College. I am also the performance narrator for a small ballet company. After many years of budgets, evaluations, data analyses, and other work oriented writing, I am now engaged in creative writing for the first time. I am responsible for creating the narration that I read to support the choreography for our younger or less ballet experienced audiences. Also, at the age of sixty-two, I have discovered crossword puzzles. I continue to be a life-long reader. (10/2011)

Paul Lankford – '69 A.B. English Language and Literature.  After graduation in June of 1969, I began my 40-year teaching career that fall in Virginia Beach, VA. For 31 years, I taught in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools, first at Bayside High School for 10 years and then as English department chair at Green Run High School for 21 years.  During that time, I was honored with these awards: City and State English Teacher of the Year (1982), City Teacher of the Year (1990), Hampton Roads Teacher of the Year (1990), Alpha Delta Kappa Friend to Education Award (1991), Great Citizen of Hampton Roads (1991), Founding Fellow of the ODU Institute for the Advancement of Teaching (1992), TEACHER TO REMEMBER ALWAYS (1994).  I co-authored CLASSICS IN WORLD LITERATURE, A GUIDE FOR TEACHING SHORT STORIES OF THE WORLD, and TO LIFE. I also chaired the Comparative and World Literature Committee of NCTE and served as Executive Secretary of VATE during those years. In 2000, fearing the impact of the SOL movement on intellectual freedom, I resigned and served my remaining nine years at Cape Henry Collegiate School, a private preparatory school also in Virginia Beach. (10/2011)

Carol (Hamersen) Garrard – '69 English with Honors.   After getting an M.A. in English Literature at the University of Virginia, I began teaching in the Virginia Community College system, and while working fulltime I completed and received the Ph.D. in English Literature from UVA in 1977. In October of 1979 I married John Garrard, then a professor at the University of Virginia, and in 1985 we moved to the University of Arizona.  With John, I have co-authored (well, in one case, co-edited) 4 books. The latest of these is Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith & Power in the New Russia, Princeton U. Press, 2008, and Oxford, 2009.  An earlier book, The Bones of Berdichev: the Life & Fate of Vasily Grossman (The Free Press, 1996, NY, NY, and London, Canada and Australia) was translated into Italian in 2009, and as Le Ossa di Berdicev: La Vita e il Destino di Vasilij Grossman (Marietta 1820: Milan, 2009), won the Giovanni Comisso Premio, the Italian national prize for history/biography.  In 2010, this book was translated into Spanish, and published by Encuentros in Madrid, Spain, as La Vida y il Destino de Vasilii Grossman.  John retired from the University of Arizona last August, and became Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies. We are still active with our writing and researching, and in fact giving a paper at the 31st Millersville University Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide this April 7th at Millersville U. We are then going to England for the final reunion of his British Intelligence cohort at Cambridge University, and then to Oxford University, from where he graduated and has been a visiting fellow at 2 different colleges. We are working on a new book about philanthropy in the new Russia.  Yes, we would like to get back to William & Mary again--we were married in the Christopher Wren building, so W & M will always be magic for me. (10/2011)

Diego Osuna – '93 BA English/Sociology Diego was featured as one of the "40 under Forty" by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.  Check it out http://www2.bizjournals.com/twincities/events/2011/40_under_forty/diego-osuna.html (10/2011)

Diana Fakhouri – '09 BA English  I'll be starting a new job as an Education and Marketing Manager with Junior Achievement of Central VA, a Richmond non-profit, where I will be handling the group's communications and social media applications as well as volunteer management. (10/2011)

Brian Henry – '94 BA English I was recently promoted to full Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Richmond. My sixth book of poetry, Wings Without Birds, was published by Salt Publishing in 2010. My translation of the Slovenian poet Ales Steger's The Book of Things was published in November as a Lannan Foundation selection by BOA Editions. I received an NEA fellowship to translate Steger's prose book Berlin. (10/2011)

Ronald Audet  - '61; '71 A.B.; M.Ed. English; English Education Since 1991 I have been retired, having taught English in the public schools of Portsmouth, Virginia, for thirty years (with a few years of administration and supervision included). I was single until 1999, when I married Linda, also an English teacher as well as a teacher and coach of drama. She retired in 2010, and since June of that year we have been living very happily indeed in Florence, Italy, indulging in all the beauty and pleasure this magnificent city provides. We would love to hear from any W&M English alumni who might find themselves in Florence. ronaudet@yahoo.com (10/2011)

Melissa Sutton Higgins – '01 BA English I probably should have updated much sooner, but I completed my MA in Writing (focus in fiction) from Johns Hopkins back in May 2009.  I also got married last October (hence the name change)! (10/2011)

Martha A. (Marti) Hunt – '70 AB English I retired in 2006 after serving as principal at two wonderful small elementary schools in New Hampshire. Retirement is keeping me busy. After a professional life of writing budgets, analysis of data, supervision reports and all the other bread and butter writing of a principal's life, I am now involved with a small ballet school based dance company as their writer and reader of ballet narration. I have written two ballet narrations and was very pleased with the second one which was for an original ballet of Hans Christian Andersen's The Nightingale. Although I am not creating original stories, the creative nature of this writing and the necessity of having good text, dance match have given me many new challenges. My retirement is being enriched by these new experiences. (10/2011)

Katherine Ragsdale – '80 AB English and Religion The Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale was married on 1/1/11 to The Rev. Canon Margaret Ewing Lloyd at the Episcopal Cathedral in Boston, MA by the bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, The Right Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, SJE (10/2011)

Frances Gilmore Harris – '63 BA English Education After many years of teaching, I offer a Shakespeare Read Aloud class to adults in Bronxville and Scarsdale, We read HAMLET, MID-SUMMER NIGHT'S DEAM AND watch scenes from films to help the reading. (10/2011)

Megan Behm – '11 BA English and Theatre Megan will be working as an assistant to the director at the Folger Theatre in Washington, DC this fall. She will also be directing a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in March. (10/2011)

Marcia Chamberlain – '90 BA English I live in Houston, Texas, where I work with Writers in the Schools (WITS), a nonprofit organization that teaches the power and pleasure of creative writing. For 14 years I have served as writer-in-residence at inner-city schools, homeless shelters, museums, and juvenile detention facilities. Currently, I teach for WITS at the Texas Children's Cancer and Hematology Centers. (10/2011)

Amanda Stanley King – '04 BA English I just recently finished a 6-year position as Marketing & Promotions Manager for Boulder Book Store, one of the largest independent bookstores in the country. It was the most fun that I've ever had at a job--not only did I get loads of free books, but I was also able to work with many of my favorite authors, such as Neil Gaiman, Yann Martel, and the late Brian Jacques. I am now living in Canberra, Australia where my husband (Andrew King, W&M Class of '05) has a post-doc position at The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). (10/2011)

Christopher Bram – '74 BA English  After nine novels and a book of essays, I will be publishing my first work of narrative nonfiction in February 2012. EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGED AMERICA begins with such authors as Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin, then, follows the next generations--Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, and Tony Kushner--right up the present. The book is being published by Twelve. (10/2011)

Lydia Dambekalns – '81  BA English and Studio Art Right after I left William and Mary, I served in the Peace Corps in Kenya, came back and taught English and Art in Arlington, VA public schools, and then studied for a Ph.D at Penn State University. I am still an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Art Education here at the University of Wyoming (where I have been since 1996). I am on my second sabbatical this coming year (the first I spent in Riga, Latvia on a Fulbright Scholar Award). This time I will be spending six months in Benin, West Africa, working at an organization that integrates all the Arts and focuses on how the Arts can positively affect populations in the developing world. I will be there from October 2011 to April 2012. If you want to check it out further, google CIAMO.org. The program is supported and partially funded by the U.S. Peace Corps. (10/2011)