MAYS LANDING — Atlantic Cape Community College Associate Professor of English Rich Russell was awarded a $19,500 prose fellowship by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts’ Individual Artist Fellowship program on February 10.
Russell, a 46-year-old resident of Absecon, NJ and full-time professor at Atlantic Cape since 2014, was motivated to seek this fellowship as a way to show support for the humanities, its artists and public organizations during a particularly challenging time for the creative medium.
“I had been thinking about the importance of not only the humanities as a discipline of study, but also the role of artists in our community: how artists help us understand the world and what it means to live in it––what it means to be human, especially in an age of artificial intelligence,” said Russell.
Russell also considered his own personal place in the humanities community not only as a professor, but as a writer.
“I’ve also been thinking about my own work as an artist, a writer. During the academic year, I am almost entirely focused on the writing that my students are doing. To be a truly effective and authentic teacher for them, I know I also need to remember why I write. When I saw that one of the categories for this year’s State Council on the Arts was prose, I was motivated to apply. I’ve been writing mostly fiction recently but I also write poetry, creative nonfiction and even plays.”
His mother, Effie, a fellow English professor at Atlantic Cape, instilled his love of writing, literature and teaching from an early age.
“As a young child, I remember carrying around blank pieces of paper and a pen before I could even write anything more than squiggly lines on a page. I think my dad’s work as a lawyer also influenced me as both literature and the law appreciate the power of language. I was also inspired and supported in my writing by teachers I had as a teenager, such as Linda Prady and Joe Bonner at Ocean City High School and then Gerri Black when I was a student here at Atlantic Cape.”
Once the rigors of the College’s academic year abate, Russell says he plans to travel over the summer to several locations that will influence and inform his writing, as well as provide him the space to compose the writing itself. He believes that this fellowship will give him the confidence to continue a writing project, from which he submitted an excerpt for the fellowship’s application process, that he has been working on.
“My plans are to work on this novel, which includes four narrators that I’m following across four time periods, beginning in the early 20th century and ending with a section set in the early 22nd century. What connects the characters is a ghost town in the Pine Barrens. I’m thinking of the novel itself as a sort of haunting. Some of the novel will be informed by our shared history here in South Jersey and the final part will be a speculation about what might be––for this particular place and for humanity.
“This novel will seek to document both individual characters’ narratives and the narrative of a specific place in South Jersey. In this novel, I’m exploring themes of memory and time through the symbolic value of ruins: how the ruins of something or someplace connect us to the past but also exist in the present and allow us to imagine the future.”
Russell plans to continue his course curriculum and the discussions he has with his students about his work on the Pinelands of Southern New Jersey in his classes.
“In my sections of English 101 the past few semesters, we’ve spent time thinking and reading and writing about place. I have students read John McPhee’s The Pine Barrens. We explore the walking trails on campus with members of the science faculty. The novel that I’m working on is set in the Pinelands of South Jersey, so I expect there will continue to be a conversation that I’m having between the work I’m doing in the classroom and the work that I’m doing outside of the classroom. It’s important that students see their professors as active practitioners of our craft. It’s important I share with students my own successes and struggles with the writing process.”
Russell cherishes the inspiration he gleans from his students and fellow College colleagues on a daily basis. He finds their discussions in the classrooms and hallways around campus to be invaluable to fostering a reflective, critical and creative mindset. Reading great works of historical and modern literature ignite his creative juices as well.
“The literature that I get to read and discuss with my students also inspires me, especially modern writers like Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner and more contemporary authors like Sally Rooney or Ocean Vuong, writers who investigate the interiority of characters and examine the human spirit. I love to read certain writers just to watch how they work out the world in words.”
The New Jersey State Council on the Arts authorized this investment of $2 million to 198 New Jersey artists, continuing its commitment to funding worthwhile awards each year. The Individual Artist Fellowships, in collaboration with Mid Atlantic Arts, are competitive awards to earmarked for New Jersey artists, in 13 rotating disciplines, granted solely on independent peer panel assessment of submitted work samples.
This anonymous process focuses on artistic quality, and awards may be used to help artists produce new work and advance their careers. This year, 893 New Jersey artists applied for awards in the categories of Film/Video, Digital/Electronic, Interdisciplinary, Painting, Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts, and Prose.
For more information on this Arts Fellowship, visit https://www.nj.gov/state/press-2026-0210.shtml.
About Atlantic Cape Community College
Established in 1964, Atlantic Cape Community College is a Middle States accredited, 2022 Achieving the Dream Leader College and Hispanic Serving Institution proudly serving the residents of Atlantic and Cape May counties. As a comprehensive, two-year community college, Atlantic Cape offers 47 undergraduate degree programs, and 34 certificate and workforce development professional series programs at its Mays Landing, Atlantic City and Cape May campuses. Atlantic Cape is home to the renowned Academy of Culinary Arts, rated the top culinary school in New Jersey, and for more than 50 years, our highly-acclaimed Nursing program. Atlantic Cape also partners with several four-year universities to offer students the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree without having to leave home.
