Poe Studies Association Updates

It is hard for me to believe that it has only been a month since the International Poe and Hawthorne Conference: Dis/Embodiment was held in Paris, France. This gathering of scholars representing over a dozen countries was a great success by any measure, and it was a pleasure for me to hear so many outstanding presentations on Poe and to participate in the rich exchange of ideas that ensued from them and from our keynote addresses. The Poe Studies Association is grateful to the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society for joining us to organize this ambitious conference, which would not have been possible without the support of our French partners and their respective institutions—Sorbonne Université, Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Université Paris Cité—that graciously hosted our sessions and activities.As ever, we are immensely grateful to Susan Tane for her generous support. Because of her, the PSA was able to award travel grants to support eighteen scholars presenting on Poe and to help subsidize the cost of catering our delightful post-conference dinner cruise on the Seine.From Henri Justin’s dramatic reading of his new translation of “The Raven” and the captivating concert by Sonya Isaak and Anne Svetoslovski (with premier performances of four settings of poems by Poe) on the opening night to Richard Kopley’s masterful keynote address on researching and writing his new biography, Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, on the closing afternoon, the Paris conference was a most memorable and enjoyable one.No sooner does one international conference end than planning must commence for the next one. I am therefore pleased to announce that Richmond, Virginia, will be the location of our next stateside international Poe conference. This was proposed in Boston at the PSA annual meeting at ALA, subsequently approved by the PSA Executive Committee, and announced at the end of the Paris conference. By holding our conference in Richmond, we will return to our beginning.The PSA is fortunate to be able to grant awards to its members for outstanding contributions to our field and service to our organization. In 2024, at our annual business meeting at ALA in Boston, I was honored to recognize Barbara Cantalupo with the presentation of the PSA’s second Lifetime Achievement Award and Paul Lewis with the PSA Honorary Membership Award. At the 2025 Paris conference, I had the pleasure of presenting the 2023 James W. Gargano Award to Alexandra Urakova for her article “Penetrating into the Secrets of the Afflicted Heart: ‘The Man of the Crowd’ and Antebellum Philanthropic Discourse” (Poe Review) and the 2023 J. Lasley Dameron Award to Amy Branam Armiento and Travis Montgomery for their coedited volume Poe and Women: Recognition and Revision (Lehigh UP).Now, with the recommendations of the PSA Awards Committee—consisting of John Gruesser (chair), Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, José Manuel Correoso Rodennas, and William E. Engel—and the vote of the PSA Executive Committee, I am pleased to announce that the 2024 Patrick F. Quinn Award goes to Jonathan Elmer for In Poe’s Wake: Travels in the Graphic and the Atmospheric (Chicago UP), the 2024 Gargano Award goes to Ashley Kniss for “Gothic Mycology and Posthuman Ethics in Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’” (Poe Studies), and the 2024 Dameron Award goes to Amy Branam Armiento for her edited collection More Than Love: The Enduring Fascination with Edgar Allan Poe (Mercer UP). Please join me in congratulating our peers on their outstanding accomplishments.There is much to look forward to in the upcoming academic year. Once again, the PSA will hold two sessions at MLA, which will be in Toronto, January 8–11, 2026. The Edgar Allan Poe Spanish Association will hold its international conference in Madrid, February 17–20, 2026. Finally, the PSA will sponsor two sessions and hold its annual business meeting at ALA, which will be back in Chicago, May 21–24, 2026. I hope that you will be able to join us at some, if not all, of these events. Also, be sure to check out our POECast (the official podcast of the PSA), hosted by PSA Member-at-Large Caleb Doan, at any time to stay up to date on current trends and publications in the world of Poe.In closing, I remain honored to serve as president of the PSA and grateful to work with our members and our international partners to promote Poe studies worldwide. I look forward to seeing you at a future PSA-sponsored event.The PSA is sponsoring the following sessions at the upcoming MLA Convention in Toronto, Canada in January 2026. If you are planning to attend the convention, please join us at these sessions.Readers are obsessed with the life of Edgar Allan Poe, but an overabundance of Poe biographies in the twentieth century (some great, some not) might have led to the dearth of scholarly Poe biographies in the early twenty-first (although less-than-scholarly Poe biographies continued to abound). This has changed in the past five years as several Poe scholars have dedicated (or are currently dedicating) their time, efforts, and acumen to writing new Poe biographies. This panel gathers three current Poe biographers (Richard Kopley, Emily Ogden, and J. Gerald Kennedy) and asks them why they decided to turn toward biography in their scholarship on Poe, what the experience of writing about Poe’s biography is like, and why, after a two- to three-decade gap, we could say that we are in a new era of serious Poe biographies.Edgar Allan Poe liked games. His tales of detection include discussions of whist, draughts, chess, “even and odd,” ciphers, and cryptograms. As an essay writer, he picked apart a game-playing machine in “Maelzel’s Chess Player.” As an editor, he challenged his readers to create cryptograms that he promised to solve. Some of his poems and stories can be read as games, and he often plays with his readers. In this panel, three scholars (Zahra Moosavi, Robert Tally, and Stephen Rachman) will analyze games in Poe’s works and Poe’s works as games. The working titles of their papers are as follows:Accounts: As of July 29, 2025, the PSA has 198 members. Restricted funds total $20,653.19; unrestricted funds total $56,782.62. Total funds, restricted and unrestricted, amount to $77,435.81.*New Item* Student Membership: The Executive Committee has agreed to implement a $20 student membership effective immediately. Please share this information with your students and colleagues. The new membership category is listed on our website at https://www.poestudiesassociation.org/store.*New Item* Recurring Donations: If you would like to set up a recurring donation to the PSA’s general fund and/or one of our award funds, visit https://www.poestudiesassociation.org/store and click on the “Join, Renew, Donate” tab. Scroll down the page and set up your donation using the payment method most convenient for you.If you have any questions or concerns about donations or finances, please do not hesitate to contact me at abranam@frostburg.edu.For CFPs and information about panels organized by PSA Members-at-Large Caleb Doan and Margarida Vale de Gato, visit the “Conferences” page on the website at https://www.poestudiesassociation.org/conferences.

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