An author and professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland will discuss how food can spark creative and critical writing during Nebraska Wesleyan University’s annual Holder Lecture.

Jennifer Cognard-Black, Associate Professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, will present, “Eat My Words: Teaching Writing Through the Literatures of Food,” on Friday, April 30. Her lecture begins at 3 p.m. in Callen Conference Center, located on the lower level of the Smith-Curtis Administration Building.

Cognard-Black will discuss the literatures of food as a genre worthy of rhetorical analysis as well as offer examples of how students in her own “Books That Cook” classes have learned the craft and art of writing through food texts of all kinds, including cookbooks, children’s books, novels, memoirs, poems and films.

A graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University, Cognard-Black now teaches courses in Victorian literature, women’s writers, the literatures of food, and fiction writing. She is also the coordinator of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Program at St. Mary’s College.

Her publications include the writing textbook Advancing Rhetoric; articles in journals such as MS Magazine, College English, American Literary Realism, and the Popular Culture Review. She has authored three books: Narrative in the Professional Age, Kindred Hands: Letters on Writing by British and American Women Authors, and a forthcoming anthology of food writing, titled The Making of a Literary Meal.

Nebraska Wesleyan’s annual Holder Lecture was established to honor the life of Kenneth R. Holder, Professor of English and Provost of NWU. Holder joined the faculty in 1972, and served as provost from 1987 to 1991. Since 1991, the Holder Lecture has brought educators who have shared their work in language theory.