December 6, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Alumna Whips Up Career as ‘L.A. Times’ Food Writer

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Hungry for small classes and more facetime with teachers, Stephanie Breijo '09 studied journalism at Mary Washington. Now, she covers Los Angeles' culinary culture as a food writer for the L.A. Times.

Hungry for small classes and more facetime with teachers, Stephanie Breijo ’09 studied journalism at Mary Washington. Now, she covers Los Angeles’ culinary culture as a food writer for the L.A. Times.

Savory meatball subs smothered in mozzarella. Sizzling birria tacos with spicy salsa. Smoky barbecue brisket with all the fixings. And a rainbow of Italian cookies.

Just try looking at Stephanie Breijo’s Instagram on an empty stomach.

“Food is universal,” said Breijo, a Los Angeles Times food writer who graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 2009. “It’s a lens everyone sees the world through, whether they’re aware of it or not.”

Reporting takes her to every corner of L.A.’s restaurant community, from pop-ups in Koreatown to bistros in Santa Monica. But before she began highlighting epicurean happenings throughout the city and curating cuisine on social media – an art that didn’t even exist when she was a student – she acquired the recipe for great storytelling at Mary Washington. Read more.

Barrenechea Presents at University of Glasgow Symposium

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Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

On April 11, 2022, Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, was an invited speaker at the University of Glasgow symposium “Fictional Maximalism and the Americas: New Voices, New Perspectives.” His presentation, “Literature of the Americas as Maximalist Discipline” discussed scholarly and historiographical encyclopedism in hemispheric American literary studies.

Richards Leads Book Discussion at Tennessee Williams Festival

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Professor of English Gary Richards

Professor of English Gary Richards

Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English and Linguistics, led the Books and Beignets forty-person discussion at the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival on Saturday, March 26, 2022, in New Orleans. To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of A Streetcar Named Desire, the group analyzed that play, focusing particularly on its form.

Barrenechea Publishes Enclopedia Entry on Literature of the Americas

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Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently published “Literature of the Americas” in The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. Ed. Leslie Larkin, Stephen Burn, and Patrick O’Donnell. London and New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022: 835-44.

Blevins Presents at Flagship Composition Conference

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Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins

Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins

Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins recently presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication 2022 Virtual Conference. Blevins presented as part of the cross-institutional panel “Informal Reading Groups as Inclusionary Practice for Facilitating Graduate Students’ Disciplinary Access and Professionalization.” Analyzing an informal, multi-year reading group, the panel identified how professional reading groups produce multiple disciplinary preparation benefits and provided suggestions for implementing reading groups.

Rafferty Showcases Presidential Essay Book on ‘With Good Reason’

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Colin Rafferty's 'Execute the Office'Associate Professor of English Colin Rafferty appeared on the latest episode of With Good Reason, which was entitled, “The Highest Office.” Rafferty spoke about his recent book of experimental essays, “Execute the Office,” which was published last year by Baobab Press. The episode also featured faculty from UVA Wise, Northern Virginia Community College and Old Dominion University. Listen here.

Lorentzen Publishes Review in Victorians Institute Journal

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Eric Lorentzen, Associate Professor of English

Eric Lorentzen, Professor of English

Eric G. Lorentzen, Professor of English, published a review of Adam Grener’s new book, Improbability, Chance, and the Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel, in the latest volume of the Victorians Institute Journal (48). Grener’s novelists (Austen, Scott, Dickens, Trollope, Hardy) were committed to a mode of fiction that primarily foregrounded chance and coincidence to “represent a historical and contingent world,” rather than creating a convincing tale of ordinary and conventional probability.

Barrenechea Publishes Essay in Collection

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Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently published “A Hemispheric World of Differences: Literature of the Americas, 1982-2000,” the lead essay in the collection Essays in Honor of Lois Parkinson Zamora: From the Americas to the World, edited by Monika Kaup and John Ochoa and issued from Lexington Books.