Griffin Receives Humanities Iowa Grant

Simpson College Professor of English Jeremy Griffin has been awarded a $3,000 Humanities Iowa grant to support the English program’s Poets & Writers series, bringing accomplished authors to campus for readings and conversations with students and community members.

Humanities Iowa, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting the humanities across the state, awards grants to projects that help enrich Iowa’s cultural landscape. For Griffin, the funding presents an opportunity to expand the series and introduce the Simpson community to an even wider range of literary voices.

The Poets & Writers series has become a staple of Simpson’s English department, featuring authors such as Kali White Vanbaale, Ralph Savarese and LaTanya McQueen. Griffin hopes the Humanities Iowa grant will allow the series to continue growing while creating new opportunities for students to engage with writers and their work.

“While the series has always afforded the Simpson and Indianola communities opportunities to meet and learn from exceptional authors, this grant will allow us to pull from a wider variety of artistic voices, which we hope will contribute to Simpson students’ growth as thinkers and citizens,” Griffin said.

Griffin, an assistant professor of English, currently serves as the coordinator of the Poets & Writers series. He said he is proud of the program’s role in highlighting literary talent from across the region and looks forward to building on that work.

“As the coordinator of the series, I am immensely proud of the work we have done to showcase the region’s literary culture, and I look forward to giving students and members of the community even more access to literary talent,” he said.