Dr. Plath earned an M.A. in English-Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he wrote his dissertation on “The Painterly Aspects of John Updike’s Fiction.” He continues to publish on Updike, as well as contemporary writers Ann Beattie and Raymond Carver. For ten years he directed the Hemingway Days Writers’ Workshop in Key West and has since become a recognized Hemingway scholar. For many years he also edited Clockwatch Review, an award-winning, nationally recognized literary magazine, and had a short stint as a feature writer for a Milwaukee newspaper. He remains an active (and avid) journalist and creative writer.

    At IWU, Dr. Plath teaches the journalism sequence and supervises most of the writing internships. He also teaches classes in creative writing—including one on the novel, “Murder We Wrote”—and courses on American literature since 1850, especially Hemingway and Modernism. Most recently he taught “American Magical Realism” as a senior seminar.

http://www.iwu.edu/~jplath