Dr. Katherine Durham Oldmixon

Poet, writing and literature scholar Katherine Durham Oldmixon teaches writing and literature and directs the Writing Program at Huston-Tillotson University. Her photographs and poems appear in many print and online publications, among them Borderlands, Texas Poetry Calendar, Utter, Passager, REAL, Ellipses, qarrtsiluni, di-vêr-city, Fiera Lingue (Poets Corner and Poets on Poets), and Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair: The Best of Texas Poetry Calendar. Her chapbook Water Signs, a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Award, was released in January 2009 by Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of many scholarly papers and presentations on such varied topics as English medieval romance, Caribbean performance, music and literature, folklore, ethnicity and writing studies, world literature, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Katherine earned a Ph.D. in English from University of Texas at Austin, where she was awarded the University Continuing Fellowship, a Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship and a Martin M Crow Fellowship in Medieval Studies. A Cynthia Mitchell Scholar at University of Houston, Katherine earned M.A. and B.A. degrees in English. In Fall 2009, she will be awarded an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans, where she won the 2009 creative writing study abroad contest in poetry. She has studied in Spain, Italy and Mexico, researched in England, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, and traveled many other places, including Guatemala, Honduras, Portugal and Japan. As a participant in seminars offered by the Faculty Resource Network at NYU, she has deepened her knowledge of literatures of the Americas, cultural studies, hip-hop pedagogy, writing studies and creative and critical thinking across the media. In 2003, she participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Caribbean Culture and Performance at University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras.

An Associate Professor of English at Huston-Tillotson, Dr. Oldmixon teaches an array of literature, writing, language, culture and arts courses, at all levels. With colleagues, she has worked to design and develop the writing, literature and communications’ program and curriculum. She oversees the Writers’ Studio and is the faculty sponsor for HT Quiet Storm Poets. Through collaborations across campus and in the community, she has sponsored many student activities, including dance workshops, literary festivals, talks with authors and filmmakers, poetry readings, and theatrical productions. She is currently engaged in an initiative to expand student media and publication opportunities. From 2002-2005, in collaboration with the late Boyd Vance of ProArts, Katherine organized annual student theater performances at Huston-Tillotson.

An artist active in the community, Dr. Oldmixon serves as the 2007-2009 president of Austin Poetry Society, on the board of Texas Folklife, and on the Community Council for the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. She has served as guest editor for issues of qarrtsiluni and Borderlands literary journals. A regular moderator at the Texas Book Festival, Katherine has hosted such panels as “Mexico in Mind,” “The Family in Fiction,” “Story Collections,” “Celebrating the Texas Poet Laureates,” “Lifting the Veil: Women Writers of the Middle East” and "Imagination Sin Fronteras: Four Writers Wrestle with Mexico." She has also been a continual supporter of the Austin International Poetry Festival, for which she hosts venues on campus annually.

Dr. Oldmixon’s professional memberships include Council of Writing Program Administrators, NCTE/College Conference on College Composition and Communication, American Comparative Literature Association, Modern Language Association, Associated Writers and Writing Programs, and International Writing Centers Association.

Mother of four grown children--Seth, Mary, Jonathon and Leah--Katherine makes her home in Austin with her husband, video/music/technology artist Arturo Lomas Garza.