Recently, graduate student Grace Buckner and film faculty Dr. Kyle Stevens each won awards for their creative and academic works. Our Digital Journalism Intern, Jacey Widner, reached out to both to talk about their work and what these awards mean to them.
Grace Buckner
Grace Buckner, a graduate student at App State in the English department, was recently selected as a 2024 Editor's Favorite in Salvation South for her short story “Where There Are No Trees” and for the 2024 Poetry Editor's Favorite Prose for her essay “A Love Letter to a Drowned Land.”
“Where There Are No Trees” is about a young boy taking care of his sister in a difficult situation. In our interview, Grace said it is a story that is very real for her. “A Love Letter to a Drowned Land” is an essay she wrote in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Grace wrote this essay before she could return to her home to express her feelings towards the devastation her community felt highlighting the resilience she saw in them.
In our interview, Grace said she felt honored to have been selected for these awards. She says the editors of Salvation South have been very supportive during the process of writing and publishing her pieces. Grace also said being recognized alongside some of her literary heroes, like Ron Rash for example, was something she cannot wrap her head around.
Always writing new things, Grace says right now her scholarship allows her more time to dedicate to her stories and essays. She is currently working on a few short stories and hopes to have a collection ready soon. Also in the works is an essay about her home in Madison County. In this essay, she continues to advocate for her community in the aftermath of hurricane Helene.
Dr. Kyle Stevens
Dr. Kyle Stevens was recently awarded the 2025 Best Essay in an Edited Collection Award by the Society for Cinema & Media Studies for his chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory. The name of his chapter is “Headphones, Cinematic Listening, and the Frame of the Skull.” His chapter focuses on the history of film sound technology to demonstrate how radical the use of headphones is and to reclaim the dream of “immersive” cinematic listening. In this chapter, Kyle describes an intracranial aesthetic that headphones create, which he says encourages people to feel like the sound is inside their heads.
Kyle says that having this award means a lot to him both academically and personally. Being recognized by one’s peers is always welcome since the committees are made up of real experts and the competition is tough. In my email interview with him, Kyle wrote that the award might mean that his chapter will reach a wider audience.
Kyle is currently working on two books, one titled The Right to Quiet Enjoyment: Headphones, Environment, and the Turn Inward. It is inspired by his award-winning headphones chapter. His approach is to show we use headphones as a defense mechanism to shut the world out rather than actually listen to what we’re hearing. This shows that headphones are not just technology, but an object to unpack theories about. His other book about the history of camp, which he says is often misunderstood as an aesthetic. Kyle wants to clarify the concept and make the case that it is everywhere in culture today.
