Contact: Sammy McDavid
A volume of selected poems and prose by former Mississippi State department head Robert B. Holland now is on sale to benefit the university's English department he once led.
"This the Matter Is" is edited by Holland's daughter Barbara H. Criswell and Paul Ruffin, a former student of the longtime MSU English professor and Meridian native who died in 1969.
A book signing by Criswell and Ruffin will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 in the Colvard Union. Copies of the 160-page collection published by the Texas Review Press will be available for purchase at $20 each.
Holland, who became English department head in 1961, also held a variety of editorial roles at the Mississippi Quarterly, an MSU-based journal of Southern culture. He came to then-Mississippi State College in 1949. Outside the department, Holland led in establishing an elected representative body of campus faculty members to provide advice and guidance to the college administration. The Robert Belton Holland Faculty Senate recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Holland completed bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Mississippi and a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin.
For persons unable to attend the Nov. 3 book signing, copies may be obtained with a $24 check or money order-$4 is added for shipping-written to Friends of the Texas Review. The mailing address is Texas Review Press, Box 2146, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341-2146.
Half of all sale proceeds will be forwarded to the MSU Foundation for support of English department graduate fellowships and to support a creative writing and reading series for guest writers. Additionally, the fund will be used to establish a departmental professorship tied closely to editorship of the Mississippi Quarterly.
For additional information on the book signing program, telephone (662) 325-7000.