PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH EMERITA

Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82 has been passionate about writing, especially poetry, since she was 12 years old. “Poetry combines many things I love: music, phrasing, concision, image-making, precision, shape making,” she told The Roanoke Times in 2018. “It’s a way of thinking and knowledge that only exists in poetic form; poetry cannot be paraphrased and retain its force and meaning.”

Throughout a nearly 40-year teaching career at Hollins, Hankla has been devoted to her craft and equally focused on helping students understand the process of writing. As she explained in a 2012 interview for Hollins magazine, “Hollins has changed tremendously during that time, but the one constant has been the creative community I was seeking and I’ve tried to make possible for other people. If you’re a writer you’ve got to do your work in solitude, but that doesn’t mean you’re not nurtured by community.”

She continued, “[Writing] happens in stages — generating ideas, drafting, revising, and editing. You also have to grow yourself spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally in order to write your best stuff. That takes time. You have to be the kind of person who can delay gratification. If you’re not, you won’t stay with it.

“I hope I inspire my students to endure and maintain humility about what that means — not mastering something but remaining a student of it for a lifetime.”

Hankla has remained committed to that philosophy throughout a remarkable span of creativity and productivity as well as dedicated support of new writers. After completing her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Hollins, she joined the faculty in 1982; the following year, her first collection of poetry, Phenomena, was published. Eight more volumes of poetry have followed, including Afterimages, Negative History, Texas School Book Depository and Great Bear (both finalists for the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize), Emerald City Blues, Poems for the Pardoned, Last Exposures, and Galaxies. Her works in other genres include fiction (Learning the Mother Tongue, A Blue Moon in Poorwater, The Land Between, and Fortune Teller Miracle Fish) and nonfiction (Lost Places: On Losing and Finding Home).

Carly Lewis ’21 remembered feeling both excitement and trepidation when she enrolled in her first advanced creative writing workshop, which was led by Hankla. “I was scared to read something from one of our random writing exercises during class because I thought it wasn’t going to be good. She told me, ‘No first draft is good. Just read it and you can fix it later. It’s not meant to be good at first.’ That’s always stuck with me. Even if you think it’s good, there’s always work to do. She’s always encouraged me to have confidence and trust my writing.”

For Gabriel Reed M.F.A. ’21, working with Hankla during his second year in the creative writing M.F.A. program at Hollins was when he began “shifting my thinking about my poetry. I narrowed in on what I was attempting to write, and Cathy was perfect for me in helping me find that voice.”

Based on Hankla’s recommendation, Reed’s debut poetry collection, Springbook, was accepted for publication by Groundhog Poetry Press.

The Richlands, Virginia, native twice served as department chair; under her leadership in 2018, Hollins’ Jackson Center for Creative Writing introduced an undergraduate major in creative writing to complement its concentration and minor in creative writing and its Master of Fine Arts in the field. Directing the Jackson Center from 2008 to 2012, Hankla spearheaded partnerships with the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference and Studio Roanoke, and helped expand scholarship support for graduate students. In 2012, she began a two-year term as the Susan Gager Jackson Professor of Creative Writing. She is poetry editor for The Hollins Critic.

Hankla’s commitment to both writing and teaching has earned admirers both on campus and beyond. “Her productivity has been truly astonishing [and] her work ethic sets the bar for all of us,” a colleague stated in 2018. In a 2003 book review for The Roanoke Times, Barbara Dickinson noted, “…her prodigious stream of poetry and fiction has been consistent in one respect: excellence. The unexpected aspect of her work is its far-reaching range of subject matter, which she brings to ground with accuracy and grace.”

Beth Burgin Waller ’04 expressed those sentiments succinctly but no less powerfully in a 2006 Roanoke Times interview: “She’s a great person, writer, and mentor. People like her inspire me.”