English Professor George Guida named City Tech 2013 Scholar On Campus

Will Deliver ‘Creativity, Language and Life’ Lecture

April 16, 2013 NYC College of Technology

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New York City College of Technology (City Tech) has chosen English Professor George Guida as its 2013 Scholar on Campus for his outstanding work as a poet, fiction writer, critic, editor and teacher. He will deliver his Scholar on Campus lecture, “Creativity, Language and Life,” and read from his poetry, on Monday, April 22, at 5 p.m., in Namm Hall 119, 300 Jay Street (at Tillary Street), in Downtown Brooklyn. Sponsored by City Tech’s Professional Development Advisory Council, the lecture is free and open to the public.

“Creativity is a means, but, more importantly, it is an end in itself,” Dr. Guida says about the subject of his lecture. “For me, the greatest example of creativity as its own goal is the exercise and the pleasure of human language.”

“Professor Guida truly exemplifies the ideals of the Scholar on Campus award,” says Pamela Brown, City Tech’s associate provost. “In addition to his impressive publication record, he serves the community through readings across the region and as co-founder of the College Poetry Slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, a competition where poets can read or recite their work.”

The Scholar on Campus award is made to a member of the faculty who has demonstrated extraordinary scholarship and creative work that has had an important impact at the College and in the larger community.

Says Dr. Guida of his selection, “I was humbled and of course pleased. While it’s not my style to get too high over accolades or too low over rejections, I did walk around smiling for a couple of days.”

Dr. Guida is the author of The Peasant and the Pen: Men, Enterprise and the Recovery of Culture in Italian American Narrative (Lang, 2003); Low Italian, his first collection of poems and a finalist for the Bordighera Poetry Prize (Bordighera Press, 2006); a second collection of poems, New York and Other Lovers (Smalls Books, 2008); a full-length play, The Pope Play, and the story collection, The Pope Stories and Other Tales of Troubled Times (Bordighera Press, 2012), which includes the Pushcart Prize-nominated story “Rome.”

His poems, stories, and critical essays have been published in journals and anthologies including Barrow Street, Inkwell, Alimentum, Literature and Gender, Poetry New York, The Columbia Journal of American Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, and Italian Americana.

Forthcoming in 2013 are a third collection of poems, Friars Club Conscience (Oliver James Press, 2013) and the novel, Letters from Suburbia. Currently Dr. Guida is at work on a book and blog project on America’s poetry scenes and their participants, tentatively titled Virtue at the Coffeehouse, from which he plans to make a film. He is also writing a trilogy of novels, including the grant-funded The Carrying Place, set in Brooklyn and in different parts of New York State over the past 75 years.

His future projects include a series of on-campus creativity seminars and a summer creativity institute for City Tech and CUNY students, led by City Tech and CUNY faculty members. Currently he is collaborating on a creative writing and journalism cluster option proposal, with Monique Ferrell, Kate Falvey, Julian Williams and other members of City Tech’s Department of English.

Dr. Guida, who is in his second term as president of the Italian American Studies Association, co-founded the College Poetry Slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, and has read his work at venues including Harvard University, the Genoa Poetry Festival, Poets House, the Tenement Museum, The Italian American Museum in Manhattan and the City Tech Literary Arts Festival. Later this spring, he will present his work at Frostburg State University, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in Manhattan, and at an April 25th benefit he will host at City Tech for Reunion Sportive d’Haiti, an organization providing recreational and educational programs for young people in Haiti.

A creative writer since age 12, Dr. Guida has taught literature and writing to CUNY students for nearly 25 years. In 1998, he joined City Tech as a full-time faculty member, and now teaches poetry, creative writing and composition; he soon will teach a course on the literature of immigration. Additionally, he is poetry editor of the literary magazine 2 Bridges Review, the third issue of which will be published this year.

Dr. Guida, who received his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, interned at The Paris Review and The Hudson Review, two of America’s leading literary magazines, and earned his doctoral degree from The CUNY Graduate Center.

New York City College of Technology (City Tech) of The City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest public college of technology in New York State. Located at 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, the College enrolls more than 16,000 students in 65 baccalaureate, associate and specialized certificate programs.