High School Senior Evangeline Lothian Project on Fred Chappell
Posted on June 9, 2022
Evangeline Lothian is a high school senior, a published poet, and bilingual in French. She’s also working on her final project for her AP English Literature and Composition class, which will focus on two poems by Fred Chappell, UNCG English Creative Writing faculty emeritus.
“I’ve been studying at a classical academy since 4th grade and I absolutely adore the focus on Ancient languages and literature. I love pursuing my hobbies- mostly photography of all sorts- and working at a small cafe.
The project is for my AP English Literature and Composition class; the assignment is a 15 minute interactive poetry presentation of a poem of our choice. I chose Mr. Chappell’s poems for two reasons.
The first is the mythological basis to Narcissus and Echo. I attend a classical academy where we focus heavily on Latin, Greek, and ancient history and rhetoric. Both growing up surrounded by modern retellings of Greek mythology, like Madeline Miller and Rick Riordan’s work, and being immersed and studying the original stories in Latin and Greek, has given me a huge passion for Greek mythology and storytelling.
The second reason is the unique literary technique, the echo voice, used in the poem. I’ve seen very few poems that use that technique, and Narcissus and Echo is the only one that had so many layers to its use, both in the story of the poem and the source material poem.”
Update: High School Senior Evangeline Lothian was previously featured for her final project focusing on Fred Chappell, UNCG English Creative Writing faculty emeritus. Since then she has gone on to achieve many amazing things. Her update is posted below.
“A couple months ago, I reached out to the English department an UNCG about contacting Mr. Fred Chappell for a project on his poem, Narcissus and Echo. They were kind enough to put me in touch with him, and I went on to get a 100% on the project and a 5 on the AP exam for English Literature & Composition. More importantly, the advice I received in his letter and the encouragement from the UNCG English department solidified my dreams of becoming an author and poet.
I ended up publishing a poetry collection, The Odyssey of Life, under the pen name Eva Grace and signing a contract with SnowRidge Press for a fantasy series based on Greek mythology, one of my passions. I began querying a second novel and decided this is what I wanted to study in university. At the moment, I’m looking at several options in terms of scholarships and funding to be able to pursue creative writing at a university with a good program. “
Congratulations, Evangeline!
